?THE STANDARD^ 
PITCH IN RELIGION 



THOMAS A. SMOOT ^ 





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THE STANDARD OF 
PITCH IN RELIGION 



THE STANDARD 

OF 

PITCH IN RELIGION 



BY 



THOMAS ARTHUR SMOOT, D.D, 




FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 

NEW YORK i2f LONDON 

1914 






Copyright, 1914, by 
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 
[Printed in the United States of America] 



Published June, lgi4 



m 121914 

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CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Chapter I 
Fundamentals and Overtones. ....... i 

Chapter II 
The Greatness of Mind 14 

Chapter III 
The Friendly Attitude 24 

Chapter IV 
The Abiding Passion. 38 

Chapter V 
Bondage and Freedom 50 

Chapter VI 
As A Man Thinketh 64 

Chapter VII 
The Nascent Thought 76 

Chapter VIII 
The Vital Touch 87 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

PAGE 
Chapter IX 

Faith and Foundations 98 

Chapter X 
The Life More Abundant 128 

Chapter XI 
The Work of the Spirit 141 

Chapter XII 
The Entity of Character 149 

Chapter XIII 
The Value of a Soul 159 

Chapter XIV 
In the Smithy of God 169 

Chapter XV 
The Quest for Perfection 177 

Chapter XVI 
The Greatest of All Dreams 185 



THE STANDARD OF 
PITCH IN RELIGION 

Chapter I 
FUNDAMENTALS AND OVERTONES 

AS the taut string has Its fundamental note, 
. upon which the whole musical gamut is based, 
so human life must have its fundamental, which be- 
comes a determining factor in all conduct and 
activities. It is useless to ask which are more 
essential to the excellency of the musical instrument, 
its primary or its secondary tones: both are indis- 
pensable. Equally empty would be the question. 
Which is the more important, the cardinal principle 
of one's life or an irradiation from that principle? 
Or, Which are the essential elements in success, 
fundamentals or reduced principles of conduct? 
We might as pertinently inquire. Which is more 
necessary, the foundation of a house or the house ? 
Every life is an entity of complex relationships. 
We find the utmost difficulty in analyzing ourselves. 
When we fancy that we have found a ruling 



2 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

motive somewhere in the vast labyrinths of the soul, 
we are sure to discover sometime later on, if we 
search diligently, that other motives overlap and 
give color to what we fain would call the simple 
basis. And yet, this very fact gives to human life 
much of its zest and sweetness. 

If one could find a stringed instrument which 
produced only fundamental tones, one would have 
a dull time of it in making music. The monotonous 
humdrum would cause pain, not pleasure. Such 
an instrument is an impossibility In the realms of 
music ; but it is sadly true that there are some soul 
instruments in the realm of spiritual music that have 
lost their quality; in which certain soft, sweet 
overtones are lacking. Nobody is eager to hear 
such a heart give forth its empty sounds. The 
delicate and gentle, the tender and the compas- 
sionate have faded out of life. There may be the 
fundamental note of honesty, or money, or pleas- 
ure: be that as it may; let the isolated aim and 
purpose spring out of a motive indifferent, fair, 
or good, and the world turns away from the 
monotonous thrumming. For if one's sole virtue 
is even so good a principle as honesty, accompa- 
nied by no kindness or compassion, one can not 
be very attractive to those in need. Some of the 
most miserly, unfeeling souls that I have ever 



FUNDAMENTALS AND OVERTONES 3 

known were those that thrummed forever on the 
one string of honesty. And this I say despite the 
fact that the world is so sadly in need of a more 
rigid type of honesty in all walks of life. We 
need not even pause to note the utter vapidness 
of the sound that grates forth from such gross 
fundamentals as love of money or love of 
pleasure. 

Likewise, If one could find a stringed instru- 
ment that gave forth nothing but overtones, one 
would be put to it to make any music, since the 
basis of pitch would be lacking. There might be 
a certain combination of sweetness, but the tones 
would run wild with no governor to restrain 
them. There could be no such instrument of 
music; but there are some soul-instruments that 
seem to be constructed upon so unfortunate a 
basis. Some, we find, have certain redeeming 
traits; but, lacking in the great essentials of 
character, their lives are well-nigh worthless to 
humanity. A man is dissipated, dishonest. In- 
dolent, and yet may show kindness to a dog; a 
woman Is selfish, flippant, envious, but kisses 
away the tears from a waifs face for love's sake. 
The overtones from such souls are sweet. If we 
could Isolate them long enough to get their full 
flavor. But how beautiful. Indeed, would they 



4 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

be, if blended Into a symphony of a genuinely 
manly or womanly life ! 

And this last statement leads me to dwell upon 
one of the most important achievements in life, 
viz., finding those sweet overtones in lives where 
chaos reigns, and making them stand out with a 
firmness and distinctness that shall turn them Into 
fundamentals. There is a standard, a norm In 
our social, moral and religious life, just as there 
Is a standard pitch In music. And as notes are 
dependent upon a varying pitch, reached by suc- 
cessive, graded steps above the standard, so are 
there different grades or planes of conduct among 
men, and what may seem but an overtone to one, 
may appear as a fundamental to another. 

To revert to the example given above, the 
norm In society does not lead to any concern 
about a stray dog, and yet the kindness of the 
outcast to that unfortunate animal may be a 
fundamental, an octave higher than the standard 
pitch of the human heart. The unllkeable 
woman who kissed away the tears from the 
child's face, might find her ^'fundamental" In an 
orphan's home, where, becoming Interested in 
the fatherless ones, all of the pent-up notes of 
sweetness in her soul might burst forth Into a 
song of helpfulness to the world. 



FUNDAMENTALS AND OVERTONES 5 

Von Helmholtz invented a resonator, which, 
when held to the ear, selects a tone of certain 
pitch and intensifies it so that it may be heard 
distinctly above other tones of differing wave 
lengths. By means of a series of resonators, the 
deep tones lying beneath the auditory range, may 
be ^'pulled up," so to speak, to the plane of hear- 
ing, while the short sound-waves, playing above 
the auditory range, may be '^pulled down" to the 
hearing plane. Hence, it is quite evident that 
there are many sound-waves in action all around 
us which we do not recognize because of our 
limitations in hearing ability. 

Analogously, there is much of the sweet music 
of the human heart being lost because nobody 
hears It. There are stray tones floating about in 
low places and high, which might come in to 
make a chord in the world's grandest symphony, 
if some skilled musician would step in long 
enough to hold the resonator to a sympathetic 
ear. 

A grave fault in human nature is that we are 
prone to train ourselves to appreciate only that 
music which is based on our own fundamentals. 
Any other pitch is lost on us because we have no 
other means of transforming it into the same 
wave lengths of our own tones. The increase in 



6 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

the range of our musical soul-gamut is a laudable 
purpose for every man. The whole world ap- 
preciates the high-grade man, with his wisdom 
and knowledge, his fine soul and character; but 
the man beneath the norm, whose life is on a low 
plane, gets little attention or care. Anybody can 
admire the character of lovely Agnes, looking 
down upon her David Copperfield, like an in- 
spiring angel; but there is something in the life 
of the ''child-wife," too, that the world needs 
and can admire, if it be no more than the 
plaintive, dying note, ''It is better as it is." Even 
Micawber has some place in the world's sym- 
phony. Dickens knew how to sweep the "harp 
of a thousand strings," and blend myriads of 
differing notes into a harmonious concordance. 
There was sweetness in the life of Paul and 
Florence Dombey; anybody could detect that. 
But how about Cap'n Cuttle, and the proud Mr. 
Dombey? There was something there, too, and 
trained, skilled fingers could bring it out. But 
the world, generally speaking, would pass by both 
of these characters and stamp them as being not 
worth the outlay of one's time to investigate. 

Some day, let us believe, the stock of re- 
sonators is going to be so increased that every 
man will deem a set of them necessary to his 



FUNDAMENTALS AND OVERTONES 7 

equipment in life, and will be listening to stray 
chords and notes from human souls that have 
in some way lost their places in the song of 
creation and redemption. 

It needs further to be said that a good deal of 
sweetness is being lost out of really well-ordered 
lives, possessing a good fundamental tone, with 
some helpful chords emanating therefrom. Some 
lives are careless of the overtones here and there 
that have their places of helpfulness, which have 
become a negligible factor to these life-players. 
A good man may mar the symphony of his life 
by the discordant overtone arising out of envy. 
I have known that one despicable overtone to 
ruin an otherwise great song. And what might I 
say of hate, malice, pride — overtones that have 
become the source of discord to so many songs 
of life? What a pity that these minor tones 
should neutralize the effect of a splendid aggre- 
gation of fine fundamentals! '*He is an ex- 
cellent man, but he has one fault," is the com- 
ment heard now and again. The fault is not 
irremediable; no man has a right to resign him- 
self to that thought; for there is an eternal 
behest, running through nature, urging all things 
toward perfection, Man is no exceptioa to 
nature's rule. 



8 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

Rectifying the harp of life, installing a new 
set of resonators, gathering up the stray tones 
out of the lives of others and retuning the ill- 
strung instrument in our own hands — these are 
tasks that belong to us. To learn the value of 
small things, to appreciate the atom as being part 
of the boulder, to learn that the vocabulary of 
childhood is indispensable to the understanding 
of a world-language — these are objects of know- 
ledge worthy any man's time to acquire. 

The fundamental things in life are never too 
big or important not to be attended by some essen- 
tial, tho small and subsidiary things. So long as 
even a minor detail is wrong in the government of 
the soul, there is a lofty aim before the soul — 
the removal or rectification of the wrong. 

The world needs every great river and ocean; 
but It can not afford to lose one drop of water. 
What effect it would have on this universe, if one 
of Its atoms should be annihilated, I am not wise 
enough even to fancy; but this I know: It is Im- 
possible to bring about such a complete destruc- 
tion of this Invisible portion of matter, and there- 
fore. Its conservation on the part of the Creator 
must be essential to His plans and purposes con- 
cerning the cosmos. If this be true concerning 
matter, how eminently true It must be of spirit! 



FUNDAMENTALS AND OVERTONES 9 

As the material world needs its every atom and 
water-drop and fleck of gold, so the human race 
is in need of every man, and every faculty of 
every man, embracing each minor emotion and 
thought. 

The fundamental tone of the soul needs to be 
clear and sweet; but the overtone must be just 
as true in order to blend with the '^music of the 
spheres." The soul that can reach an octave 
higher or lower than its own normal pitch will 
be invited to sing with archangels. 

The question of standard pitch thrusts itself 
upon us, demanding. How can we avoid confu- 
sion and clang of sound in a world where myriads 
of temperaments would seem to call for innumer- 
able fundamentals? Would not a multiplicity of 
fundamentals, differing in wave-lengths, destroy 
the harmony of the symphony of the human 
race? The reply reminds us, that in the musical 
world there is an international standard of pitch, 
agreed upon by instrument-makers, which calls 
for uniformity of basic tone. By this agreement, 
a piano made in France has the same quantitative 
value, as to physical wave-lengths, in its funda- 
mental tones, as a piano made in America. 

And in reality, this agreement of the makers 
of instruments goes back for its authority to 



lo THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

common and inherent principles of the human 
race, without regard to language, color or cul- 
ture. For it is a well-known fact that savages 
in the jungles of the Amazon River have been 
known to weep under the charm of a violin, from 
which a missionary drew the sweet melody of 
^'Jesus, Lover of My Soul." These wild men of 
the forest, fierce children of nature, had their 
javelins uplifted to thrust through the white in- 
truder; but when he began to sing, and drew his 
bow tremulously in tender accompaniment, the 
hard hearts of the natives melted, their arms 
were grounded, and tears of compassion streamed 
down their swarthy faces. They did not know 
a word that was sung; the theme of the hymn 
was a blank to them; of music as a science they 
were totally ignorant; but their hearts were set 
to the standard pitch of humanity, and they 
caught the melody, understood its language, and 
yielded to its thrilling story. 

If there is surely a uniform standard of pitch 
in the musical world, based upon physical quali- 
ties of a common sensory nervous system, as well 
as a certain similarity of mental activity, just as 
truly there exists the norm of moral conduct in 
the arena of racial activities. There must be 
some standard pitch by which harmony is to be 



FUNDAMENTALS AND OVERTONES ii 

determined and measured in the world. There 
is not one standard for white, another for black 
people; all must yield to the authority of a com- 
mon fundamental. 

It is in keeping with this logical principle of 
human existence that Jesus of Nazareth became 
the norm of human life, the fundamental tone 
for all moral conduct, the standard of pitch for 
all time and for all men as pertains to morals 
and religion. We should of necessity have great 
confusion in the world of moral action but for 
this law, exemplified by the Founder of Chris- 
tianity. What might be deemed right in England 
would be condemned as wrong in the United 
States; the morals of China would be incom- 
patible with those of Africa, under the negation 
of the truth in question. The world could never 
get together on anything of moral value. Defini- 
tion Itself would become misty, since terms for 
honesty and purity in one country would be In- 
valid and Inoperative in another. 

Quite naturally, then, the Son of Man, with 
acute understanding of the entire race, declared 
that He was the Way, the Truth, and the Life. 
That Is, He was the norm of right conduct; His 
life was to be the standard of pitch of all activi- 
ties among men — social, moral, religious. Nor 



12 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

does the truth of this declaration In any sense 
affect the autonomy of any mortal, or limit the 
range of his achievements. A piano under the 
touch of a master has the same fundamental as 
it does under the touch of a novice, but the per- 
formances of the two differ as much as do day and 
night. More, even the master may continuously 
become more skilled, learn new combinations, and 
widen the range of his accomplishments. It is 
equally true that in establishing a norm of conduct 
within Himself, the Son of Man was only proceed- 
ing along the highway of the essential truth, that In 
God's universe there must be unity and harmony, 
whether It be In the physical or moral sphere. 

The revolutionary value of Jesus of Nazareth 
in the world, both morally and physically, must 
have a profound recognition in any philosophy 
of life that looks for a sane and single standard 
of conduct. Without such a standard the 
various systems of ethics remind us of the '^sound- 
ing brass and tinkling cymbal." The principle 
of unity set forth In the Christian system de- 
clares as its ultimate objective the correlation of 
any and all forces whatsoever, looking toward 
an eternal conquest In the Interest of the truth. 
But just as the fundamental tone of an Instru- 
ment has Its myriads of overtones, with innumer- 



FUNDAMENTALS AND OVERTONES 13 

able combinations, capable of being extended to 
infinity, so does the everlasting standard of pitch 
established by the Son of Man connote for 
humanity a vastness of range in effort, a breadth 
of vision, and a glory of attainment that stagger 
the potential possessors with responsibility. 



Chapter II 
THE GREATNESS OF MIND 

IF the analogies between matter and mind that 
have been presented in the preceding chapter 
are in any large sense worthy of credence, human- 
ity needs to stop still and, looking within its own 
heart, take an inventory of its possibilities. I 
say inventory; and yet, such can not be done in 
the full sense, for that would imply a complete 
appraisal of man's resources. And this can never 
be attained. The task is beyond the range of 
human calculus. The fundamental note of 
humanity as established by Jesus of Nazareth 
connotes an infinitude of overtones that tend to 
swell into every nook and cranny of an unlimited 
universe. To express it by yet another figure, 
man, as defined in terms of the Son of Man, 
must have as his exponent a term whose function 
is not completed until it has been lifted to the 
nth power. 

There came to me recently an opportunity to 
illustrate the greatness of the mind with which 

14 



THE GREATNESS OF MIND 15 

man Is endowed. While buying papers at a news- 
stand, I observed a keen-eyed little Russian 
Jewess peering around my elbow, evidently in- 
tent upon arresting attention. **I heard you talk 
at the opening exercises of school yesterday morn- 
ing," she remarked, with a glow of interest upon 
her face. '*And what did I say, my little girl?" 
was my query. "You said that our heads were 
bigger than the United States, and that our 
hearts were large enough to cover the continent," 
she replied, with a triumphant smile. "I went 
home and told father about it," she continued, 
**and he said he suspected it was pretty nearly 
true." 

I was pleased to see that my address to the 
school children had borne some fruit, if in no 
other mind than that of this obscure child, to 
whom there had come a fresh gleam of light 
as to her potentialities. In truth, our heads — 
which means our hearts, too — are larger than our 
great country, in a distinctive sense, and we shall 
never have done exploiting their untold resources, 
if w^e but keep at the task, in faith and hope. 
The nations of the world have partitioned up 
the earth with such greedy care that all is now 
taken; no discoverer may add to his country's 
possessions by opening up new territory in the 



1 6 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

future. But we individual men and women can 
fit out exploring expeditions into the vast world 
of mind, and find new continents, oceans, and 
islands of thought. One admires the spirit of 
that ancient hero of Trojan wars and later wan- 
derings, who, in one of Tennyson's fine poems, 
exhorts his old mariners, after their return home: 

"... Come, my friends, 
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. 
Push off, and sitting well in order smite 
The sounding furrows ; for my purpose holds 
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 
Of all the western stars, until I die." 

He is not content to recline in ease and idle- 
ness; that could bring no pleasure to such a spirit 
as his. But, 

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield," 

seems to him a joy worthy of being an end within 
itself for the earth-born mortal. 

The psychologist assures us that there are be- 
tween six hundred million and two billion cells 
in the human brain. It must follow that the 
combinations possible for so vast a number are 
well-nigh infinite. And since memory, the pre- 
requisite of all knowledge, is dependent upon cell- 
changes, it"* must be concluded that the mind, 



THE GREATNESS OF MIND 17 

working through the brain, is practically without 
limit as to its possibilities of acquirement of facts 
and truths. **The wisest person that ever lived 
probably had several million brain-cells that were 
more or less idle." To demonstrate the truth 
of these statements graphically, take the number, 
one hundred, and interest yourself by observing 
the many combinations you may make from it. 
Then, having grown weary with so small a task 
as that, reflect upon the extent to which you can 
form new aggregations of brain-cells out of the 
two billion that are at your disposal ! And every 
such aggregation of cells gives a new point of 
vision as to the mind's glory and extent. 

The formation of these new thought-centers 
may be compared to the turning of a kaleido- 
scope, by which new configurations are brought 
before the eye. The static mind, in like manner, 
may have wonderfully beautiful pictures before 
it, but unless the machine revolves, no new scenes 
appear. The difference between the static, and 
therefore empty, mind, and the active, aggressive 
mind, may be illustrated by the contrast between 
the sluggard in his rags and the industrious, pros- 
perous citizen and man of affairs, dwelling in 
plenty, which becomes more abundant auto- 
matically. 



1 8 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

The mind has a superficial vastness that wc 
might compare to the topography of the earth. 
If one man were to endeavor to visit every con- 
tinent of the earth, and every island of the seas, 
to explore every mountain to its topmost crag 
and every river to its smallest tributary, he would 
have covered the whole planet in less time than 
he could have as minutely traversed the periphery 
of the human brain, with all of its potentialities 
for thinking. And having in a cycle traversed 
the brain once, he might cover it again and again 
a thousand times, and even in his final journey 
he would observe new objects of truth and beauty, 
just as the traveler around the globe finds new 
scenes of inspiration and joy. 

But there is a world beneath the surface, more 
wonderful in the mind than in the earth. We 
are continuously sinking shafts into the mines for 
treasures and wonders hidden underneath the 
crust of our planet, and man will never, to the 
end of time, be able to exploit them all. Much 
less shall we ever be able to bring out all of the 
hidden wealth that lies buried beneath the sur- 
faces of our own hearts. The deeper we go, the 
richer are the discovered treasures. If you sink 
a shaft into the mine of science, you can never 
work it to a finish; if you go into the mine of 



THE GREATNESS OF MIND 19 

philosophy, its treasures are endless. So of all 
branches of human knowledge. 

If men but realized the wealth that lies hidden 
within themselves, but realized it, I repeat, there 
would be no idleness, no wasted years, no vicious 
habits. For to realize means to make actual in 
consciousness as a fact or entity; and no man, 
while laying hold of the richest jewels of the 
human soul, would or could let them drop in 
idleness, nor could he walk off indifferently and 
leave them, in order to gather up germ-filled 
garbage out of the world's trash-pile. 

A man needs only to '*come to himself" In 
order to become better. The slave of passion 
groans at times of divine illumination, craving to 
be delivered from the bondage of bad habit. 
And yet, if men but realized it, the baser passions 
die easily when the soul climbs into the higher 
realms of thought. It is easy to lop off bad 
habits in the wonderful world of mind. The 
cure for hurtful impulses lies, not in fighting 
them, but rather in going away and leaving them. 
A sensuous soul can battle against its desires by 
the hour and be none the better for the conflict, 
while an excursion, in company with some master- 
mind into the realms of spirit, causes the soul to 
forget the lower passions, and so rescues the life 



20 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

from destruction. A strong book has made many 
a long winter's evening short, and thereby turned 
the dross of many a soul, by a wondrous process 
of alchemy, into pure gold. 

The mind itself never wears out. As long as 
the brain-tissue remains unimpaired the mind can 
continue to use it for as good work as was ever 
done. The hands and feet grow feeble, the eyes 
and ears lose their powers, but the mind itself 
never grows weary nor impotent. It is the only 
part of us that grows brighter and stronger with 
age and use. And this is true because it is the 
only infinite thing about us, the very essence of 
undying selfhood. I could think of mind in no 
other way with any degree of satisfaction to 
myself. If it wears out like the body, then mind 
in Its essence is painfully powerless, not to be 
entrusted with the vital issues of the universe. 
Indeed, if mind-decay were possible, our posses- 
sions would all be delusive unrealities. 

I am aware that impaired brain-tissue cuts off 
the mind's power of demonstrating itself here in 
the material world; this must be admitted. But 
until that time comes the mind moves on, an 
example of perpetual motion. The more it gives 
out the more is left. '*He that saveth his life 
shall lose It, and whosoever loseth his life, for 



THE GREATNESS OF MIND 21 

My sake {i.e., the sake of the Great Mind of 
the universe) shall find it." The man that is 
sparing with his thought shall die poor, and 
whosoever is lavish in its use shall be rich by 
reason of his prodigality. 

Some men are really stingy with their thoughts, 
and it naturally follows that they themselves 
should come to want. If **the liberal soul shall 
be made fat," it is well to give out the very best 
mental product one has at all times. Economy 
in a household is fine wisdom with every thing 
except thought, and that commodity should be 
lavishly used at all times. Often we act as tho 
we considered any substitute for the highest 
thought as being good enough for home con- 
sumption. But such parsimony will cost alarm- 
ingly in the end by producing leanness of soul. 
The woman who opened her house to Elijah had 
enough food for her needs, altho she scraped the 
bottom of the barrel every day, and poured out the 
last drop of oil as well. She and her guest had 
faith. In like manner, we should dip out enough 
mental pabulum to serve for a full dinner, even tho 
we scrape the bottom in order to do it. If one gives 
freely, one must ever receive freely. He that 
goes to the bottom of the barrel for the last 
handful of meal will find more when he returns. 



22 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

and whoever empties his cruse of oil into the 
cup of his hungry fellow, is sure to find his vessel 
filled when he takes it up again. 

Taking this view of mental activity, it becomes 
easily apparent that the faculty for thinking indi- 
cates a high form of religious duty. Moreover, 
religion becomes a central fact in the highest 
forms of mentality, so that all thought is literally 
governed by the fundamental note, religion, which 
means attitude toward God. The Pauline in- 
junction, *Xet this mind be in you, which was 
also in Christ Jesus," passes over to us for con- 
sideration the superb proposition that a man may 
become so completely saturated with the love of 
Christ that the output of his mind will be a re- 
production of the thought of Christ. He thinks 
in the terms of the Being who redeemed him, 
made him anew; caused him to become re- 
born, and in a marvelously true sense to have the 
imprimatur of his Father stamped upon him. 

Only upon an hypothesis of the unlimited 
range of the mind in its final reaches can man 
with any intelligent effort undertake to work out 
a destiny that sweeps beyond the borders of time. 
Granted his survival after the death of the 
body, and we have before us the widest range of 
prophetic outlook as to what shall befall the soul 



THE GREATNESS OF MIND 23 

through eternity. And yet I must have some 
precursor in that unknown world in order to 
steady my faith and give me the assurance of 
hope. This want of my heart is met in the 
person of Jesus Christ, whose declaration of his 
mission as forerunner localizes the soul's ob- 
jective in the "Father's house." This personal 
touch warms the human heart and removes from 
the mind a certain fear of the other world that 
would otherwise make it ghost-like and uncanny. 
Moreover, an apostle who was close to his 
Master before and after death, said: '*We know 
that when He shall appear, we shall be like 
Him." In the light of such assurance the trust- 
ing mind learns to contemplate crossing the 
borders of time with a degree of complacency, 
which even grows into eager expectation. 



Chapter III 
THE FRIENDLY ATTITUDE 

SUCH a view of the human mind suggests to 
any reflecting individual a concept of life 
that embraces as a field of operation the entire 
universe, material and spiritual. If the soul has 
had its habitat upon this planet, and with a 
measure of success wrought out its destiny here, 
amid warring forces, it is possible to conceive of 
the entire universe as being an expanded sphere 
for continued soul-activities. Such a fact would 
furthermore place upon the human mind a tre- 
mendous responsibility, namely, that of properly 
equating life on this side of death with the life 
beyond the great divide. Too much attention 
of a certain type to earthly affairs crowds into 
one part of the equation certain extraneous fac- 
tors that have no counterpart on the eternal side. 
Equally true may be the statement that some 
over-spirituelle persons might give a fictitious 
value to the equation on the thither side of life, 
rendering necessary the introduction of false 
entries on the hither side of the equation, thus 

24 



THE FRIENDLY ATTITUDE 25 

making human existence fanciful, mystical and 
impractical. 

The question logically arising in the well 
ordered human mind at this point is, What 
should be my attitude toward the present mate- 
rial world in which I live? What is my relation 
to matter from an ethical and religious view- 
point? Does the material base of my existence 
affect in any essential sense my soul-motives, both 
as to this life and the life extended beyond? 
These, and many other questions hammer at the 
door of reason for admission into the council 
chamber of conscience, where all problems of an 
ethical character must be solved. For, whatever 
may be our philosophy of life, the fact of evil is 
linked to the fact of materiality, just as indis- 
solubly as is the fact of good. An essential con- 
nection in our experience between matter and 
ethics renders our attitude toward matter a sub- 
ject of paramount importance. 

For I must have an attitude of friendliness or 
hostility; of indifference or interest; of joy or 
sorrow; of hope or despair. It is quite possible 
for me to look upon the earth as a low-ground 
of sorrow, filled with weeping willows, upon 
which anon I may hang my harp, having refused 
to sing or rejoice. I can look upon the world, so 



26 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

constituted, as being filled with enmity toward 
me, and hostile to my final happiness and wel- 
fare. And so, I may assume the attitude of hos- 
tility toward all my surroundings. In contradis- 
tinction to this attitude, I may enter upon my 
career with a feeling of friendliness toward the 
material of this present world, its laws, forces, 
and warring elements. It is my privilege to hold 
out the hand of friendship to the forces of 
nature, and even tho I may feel the prick of 
thorns and briers for my trouble, I can bind up 
the wounds, assuring myself with a smile that I 
have tried to shake hands in the wrong way; 
that nature's heart is essentially good and kind, 
and that she will at last give me a friendly grip. 
It is only by meeting the great world of our 
human kind in such a spirit, that we may hope 
to have friends. The surly individual offers no 
market for friendship, and hence, rarely has any 
in stock. There are times when he would like to 
possess some of the commodity, but his parsi- 
monious expenditure of effort has rendered it 
improbable that he should have it. Friendship 
is a fair spirit who rejoices to make her abode in 
the sunny gardens where open roses with the 
morning dew upon them. She can not live in 
dark places nor cellars where flourish fungous 



THE FRIENDLY ATTITUDE 27 

plants; friendship droops and dies among molds, 
mildews, and mushrooms. 

And this attitude of friendliness is the basis 
for the possession of friends, not only in the 
human world, but in every other. The student 
must be friendly toward his books or they will 
never "warm up" to him. The geologist must 
be friendly toward the rocks if he would have 
them tell their secrets; the chemist must look 
most kindly upon dark precipitates and biting 
acids if he would coax out of them a true story 
of their combining powers. Often have I seen a 
youth make a lasting enemy of mathematics 
merely because he began the ugly habit of frown- 
ing upon arithmetic, snarling at algebra, and 
later on casting defamatory aspersions upon the 
good character of geometry. He may even have 
torn leaves from a treatise on that science, or 
flung the book harshly and disrespectfully upon 
the floor in his wrath against an unoffending 
presentation of the truth. Is it any wonder that 
the science assumed a hard and unapproachable 
attitude toward him, and kept it up until, for 
good and all, the two parted company? 

The friendly attitude toward life, in Its broad 
and all-inclusive sense, is certainly better than the 
unfriendly viewpoint. By such a spirit of 



28 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

friendliness one gets more out of living, and 
leaves a larger contribution to the world in the 
end. The martial attitude may have been neces- 
sary in early days, involving the setting up of 
tribe against tribe, and the destruction of property 
and life, but one can not help picturing in the 
mind the ideal world we might have now if war- 
fare had ceased several centuries ago. What 
splendid energies have run to waste in the streams 
of blood that have flown upon ten thousand bat- 
tle-fields on the plains of Europe and America! 
How much priceless treasure, the concrete ex- 
pression of the hard toil of men, has gone up in 
smoke through warfare, thus lowering the world's 
efficiency ! 

^'But is not life within itself a struggle, and 
must not every organism fight in order to live?" 
Yes; but let the fight be a friendly one. A good- 
natured day-laborer is more effective in the end 
than one that Is ill-natured. The manufacturer 
that feels happy and looks bright can make a 
better cloth than his competitor that is angry 
with him. The banker that curbs his temper 
and looks pleasant can count money more ac- 
curately than the surly man at his side who has 
lost his temper. Your business man that goes 
frowning and snorting down to the arena of trade 



THE FRIENDLY ATTITUDE 29 

is in good frame to '^knock down and drag out" 
all opponents, from a physical standpoint, but on 
a mental basis, which is the real one, he is far 
weaker to hold his own than if he were in good 
humor. And even in a physical contest, which 
may sometimes be thrust upon one, the too tense 
nerve and muscle often means defeat. The 
Japanese system of wrestling called jiu-jitsu owes 
its effectiveness to the non-resistive attitude of 
the body to that of its antagonist. The master in 
this art trains his body to yield, bend, recoil, in 
such fashion as to cause his opponent to dislocate 
his own limbs and joints by the very fierceness 
of the attack which he himself makes. The 
wrestler in this system utilizes his antagonist's 
strength by causing it to expend itself against a 
constantly receding object, the effect of which is 
to weaken the aggressor without adding aught to 
his cause. We have seen an over-eager amateur 
boxer draw back and summon his most powerful 
blow for his opponent only to fan the air in 
chagrin and disappointment. 

The surest way to exhaustion and defeat is 
to rush to one's tasks in the morning with nerves 
so tense that the hand is unsteady. The desire 
to do an enormous amount of work blazes so 
hotly in our hearts that it burns up our energies 



30 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

in the process. Our disappointment at the failure 
only increases our disability, and the day wanes 
and closes with emptiness of results. 

**But what of our attitude toward evil? 
Should not our indignation burn hotly against 
that?" Assuredly; and we ought not even to 
squint our eyes at wrong. More, there are many 
wrongs which, if we look them full in the face, 
will arouse the deepest antagonism of our nature. 
But indignation may burn like a blue-flame of the 
laboratory — quietly, softly, yet all the more in- 
tensely, and to a purpose, viz., the fusing of 
elements in the crucible. This is far better than 
a spectacular conflagration that would destroy the 
whole laboratory, along with crucible and fused 
elements. Fiery enthusiasm is too often self- 
destructive, as well as being fatal to a good 
cause. 

Evils can frequently be rectified by a non- 
resistive, even friendly attitude. Many a crimi- 
nal, who is considered the incarnation of wicked- 
ness, might be brought to a better life by the 
application of this principle. Some good 

^'Bishop of D ," leads a Jean Valjean to a life 

of honor and usefulness, not by testifying against 
him for stealing silver, but by shielding him, in 
very kindness, from the iron hand of the law 



THE FRIENDLY ATTITUDE 31 

which has nothing humanitarian in It. Harsh- 
ness never yet brought out the little good that 
remained dormant in the felon's heart. Some time 
we shall learn that our system of punishment is 
grossly wrong, even from an economic stand- 
point, not to mention any higher basis. Some 
day we will place in charge of the criminal class 
our strongest, best, most skilled men, whose wis- 
dom will make them kind, and whose knowledge 
will enable them to recognize that a long fulcrum 
Is better than a short one If you would prize a 
stranded ship out of the mud. 

Yes, evil is to be overcome, overpowered, If 
you please; but how? By non-resistance. '*Re- 
sist not evil." If I am Insulted, the hot rejoinder 
does not bring about an apology, but only renews 
the quarrel. ''Turning the other side'' may 
bring, not only an apology, but may cause the 
pouring of oil Into the wounds of the smitten 
check on the part of the insulter. *'The other 
side," gives the enemy a chance to see from a 
new viewpoint. The smitten side Is covered with 
blood — and blood ever whets the lion's appetite. 
The bloodless side has no suggestion of conflict; 
It Is neutral, pacificatory In Its appearance. If 
everybody had been able to look at this other 
side in i860 we would have had no Civil War. 



32 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

For '*thc other side" is ever the side of kindness, 
brotherliness. 

We worry ourselves sick over insults, real or 
Imagined wrongs. Men smite our cheek; then 
what? Turn the other side and let them smite 
that, too? That would seem to be the command 
of the great Teacher. But what of the ruffian, 
the villain, the coarse, ill-bred person? Let the 
same thug beat our faces black on one side and 
blue on the other? Permit the boor to tread 
upon our toes, and then extend the other foot 
for the same treatment? An answer to these 
questions demands more than categorical state- 
ments. Certainly, one must defend oneself 
against thieves and robbers; the perpetuation of 
the race requires that. But self-defense does not 
extend to the point of the aggressive punishment 
which the world Is wont to give. It sometimes 
becomes necessary for a parent to hold the hands 
of his angered, raging child, but to brutally 
wound and hurt him would be wrong. The 
father has only been turning the other side — 
the side of kindness — ^by firmly gripping the young- 
ster's arms until the storm of wrath Is lulled. 
The child Is thereby conquered by kindness, and 
readily capitulates to love. And that Is the very 
kernel of the divine teaching — to rise above pas- 



THE FRIENDLY ATTITUDE 33 

sion, and be able to display to the offender such 
a fraternal and sympathetic side of character 
that he will be attracted by it and strive to 
emulate it. ''A soft answer turneth away wrath"; 
but what of a harsh reply? If half the world 
would begin to speak gently to angered, mad- 
dened souls, the other half would catch up the 
vibrations of sweetness just as one violin string 
responds to the vibrations of another string that 
has been plucked. 

We too frequently manifest the resistive atti- 
tude in the performance of our tasks. We go 
at them as if we were in a sparring-match, bat- 
tling against, instead of falling in with, the cur- 
rent of forces that we are to utilize. The way 
to master the current of a stream is to swim with 
it; then, the otherwise antagonist becomes our 
helper. Our real task in life is to direct, not 
overcome, forces. One overcomes evil in another 
individual, not so much by attacking the evil as 
by bringing out the good. To attack the evil 
only establishes a storm-center there, occupies the 
attention of the person attacked, and makes him 
neglectful of the good that may lie dormant 
within. To focalize his mind upon the good in 
himself brings into play the identical psychic 
laws, and the evil is thereby overlooked. Evil Is 



34 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

ever overcome by substitution, not annihilation ; by 
displacement rather than destruction. 

The business man that goes to his desk in the 
resistive attitude is fighting against his best forces 
— those that are within. The back of his neck is 
rigid, his spinal column stiff, the nerves of his 
entire body tense. It requires much energy to 
sustain these attitudes — energy that ought to be 
expended upon the piles of papers that lie before 
him. And long before he is through them, the 
neck IS tired, the small of the back is in a rack 
of pain, while the whole nervous system is in re- 
bellion against unjust treatment. All through the 
day this man was fighting against his tasks, and 
the harder he stuck at them, the more fiercely 
they rebounded, just as a punching-bag flies back 
into a boy's face from the impact of harder 
blows. No wonder worries multiplied as the 
day waned until, well-nigh distracted, he closed 
his desk with a sigh and a groan. What the 
man needed to have made It different was a 
better understanding of the gospel of relaxation 
and non-resistance. 

We fight our vexations scientifically not by 
resisting, but rather by letting them swing past 
us. Keep out of the path of worries and pro- 
ceed with your work, is a good rule. If you try 



THE FRIENDLY ATTITUDE 35 

to quit worrying you will fail; if you go heartily 
to your task, you are obliged to forget worries. 
**How do you get along with doubts?" asked a 
parishioner of a minister. *'I don't have time 
to bother with them," was the reply. And there 
is sound philosophy in the answer. There are 
enough positives in life to keep us busy without 
wasting our time on negatives. In learning to 
ride a bicycle I found from experience what I 
could not understand from theory, that the way 
to break the spell of an object to be avoided Is 
to remove the eyes from it. We become object- 
struck by our vexations. All day we run with 
our disappointments as the most prominent ob- 
jects of consideration; Is it wonderful that we 
come Into them as the day closes, and find our- 
selves stunned by the sudden collision? 

A seemingly different principle^ yet virtually 
the same as that which has so far been enun- 
ciated, needs to be noticed; some enemies, In- 
stead of being avoided, need merely to be ap- 
proached in a friendly way. It Is safer to stand 
squarely and face a fierce canine than to run 
from him across an open field. If you fly, you 
are sure to be caught and bitten. Your flight 
only intensifies the fierceness and sense of superi- 
ority of the snarling animal. The part of wis- 



36 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

dom is to **make up" to the enemy; speak kindly, 
gently, and without trace of fear. If once you 
can lay your hand on his head and give a friendly 
stroke, you are safe. If you meet a headache 
in the way, the part of wisdom may not be to 
run from it in dread, fear or hate, by the use of 
anesthetics; it is often better to "make up" to 
the headache by the use of mental medicine, 
which is nothing more than a friendly attitude. 
A fierce, raging ache or pain is likely to become 
docile under such treatment. Skill and strategy 
are as much needed in our daily struggles with 
ourselves as they are on the great fields of battle, 
where mighty armies face each other. 

We need the friendly attitude toward a con- 
science which is ever bringing to us a sense of 
self-condemnation and disgust with the past. I 
am aware that we should despise wickedness and 
sinfulness, but we should not hate ourselves. 
When conscience comes to you and sneers, '*Be- 
hold your historic self; see that piece of evil in 
your former life; do you think you should ever 
respect yourself again?" you need to hold up 
before conscience the better part of the past. 
Present to her deeds of goodness, and lay before 
her days upon days of clean, wholesome struggle 
after the truth. You will find conscience molli- 



THE FRIENDLY ATTITUDE 37 

fied, softened, gentler. And that attitude is not 
the self-righteous one; it is merely ^'turning the 
other side" of your soul's countenance, and sav- 
ing yourself from a wholesale and destructive 
self-condemnation. If you keep nothing but your 
past life before conscience, she will burn your 
soul into a veritable crisp under the spur and 
goad of the enmity that is ever flaunted in her 
face. Turn the other side, saying to her: ''Here, 
in the home circle, is the noble desire; there, in 
the school life, is the high ambition; and yonder, 
by the brook, under the old oak, is the deep 
yearning after God and Truth." 

It is then that the fretting guardian of men's 
happiness will become calm and friendly, loving 
and kind; and with locked arms, you and your 
conscience may walk down the pathway together 
in the bonds of congenial fellowship. Both — 
you and your conscience — have won; the integrity 
of the right has been vindicated; you are on 
friendly terms with yourself and the whole world. 
And finally, you have prepared yourself in atti- 
tude for a friendly acquaintance with the universe 
as a whole, spreading as it does into the limitless 
spaces beyond the little ball on which we live and 
move. 



Chapter IV 
THE ABIDING PASSION 

WE need pause here to fortify our minds 
against the absorption of a concept of 
life which, because of its speciousness, may lead 
us into a false position as to our relations with 
the elements of the material sphere to which our 
present existence is limited. We must be careful 
in our definition of friendliness to acquire a virile 
and vigorous attitude in our interpretation of the 
term. There is to be nothing anemic implied 
in the objective of friendliness, nor of calm com- 
placency as we view the clash of forces on the 
battleground of the soul. Yea, more; there is a 
profound moral oughtness resting upon us that 
declares man's attitude should be enthusiastically 
friendly to the forces about him. It Is necessary 
to view this earth as a field of human activity in 
which there is a tremendous amount of work to 
do. And each man, to be true to his destiny, is 
under moral necessity of having his hands over- 
flowingly full of tasks that have been set by the 
Creator as the creature's part. 

38 



THE ABIDING PASSION 39 

The most miserable class in the world, whether 
composed of surfeited rich, or helpless poor, is 
that aggregation of individuals who have nothing 
to do. Close up to this company of folk is the 
yet larger class which has plenty to do, but is un- 
happy in the doing of It. The Fates preserve us 
from being in either! 

It is pleasing to see a man interested and 
happily absorbed in his work. His business may 
consist in mending shoes, but if he is thoroughly 
and contentedly entertained by his tasks, he is 
to be congratulated. There are few finer spec- 
tacles in the work-a-day world than that of this 
same cobbler, singing over his last, week upon 
week, until finally he comes down to a certain 
day which marks the end of his shoe-mending. 
Despite that pain in his side, he puts the finishing 
touch on the little patch, gives a final gloss to 
the heel and sole, shuts up shop for ay, and 
goes home in the consciousness that he has com- 
pleted an honest job. 

If we were to inquire closely into the philoso- 
phy of life as held by this humble man, we 
should likely get very little that would be 
illuminating. The best we should hear would 
probably be something like this: ''I have striven 
to make an honest living for my wife and chil- 



40 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

dren, and in doing so, it was a pleasure to render 
satisfaction to my patrons." And I would not 
sneer at the philosophy of Industry and common 
honesty in bread-winning; would that it might 
spread to all quarters and into all vocations! 

If we ascend the ladder from this lowest in- 
dustrial rung, which touches the ground at the 
cobbler^s shop, we may find at the top the manu- 
facturer of shoes, who has taken much pride and 
expended great pains in building up the reputa- 
tion of his output. Maybe he has enjoyed the 
commendable feat of succeeding, and it has been 
intoxicating to him to meet competition and over- 
come it. He has long since passed the mark of 
merely making a living for his family; it hardly 
enters into his head from day to day to count 
bread-winning as an object in life to him. It is 
the game of business, the luxury of success, the 
stimulant of winning out in the contest that brings 
him joy. One day he ends his respectable career, 
and is eulogized as an example of thrift and 
good citizenship — and those are no mean en- 
comiums, either. It ought to be gratifying, in- 
deed, to any man to feel that, when he is gone, 
plaudits so honorable will be passed upon him. 

Despite all the good we could say of both 
men, however, if we stop with the preceding ac- 



THE ABIDING PASSION 41 

counts of the lives of the cobbler or manufac- 
turer, there is something unsatisfactory in the 
contemplation. If the joy of the one consisted 
in honest bread-winning, and that of the other in 
business success, we must turn away from them 
if we would find true exemplars. We feel the 
want of types with more in them of what I shall 
call soul-passion. There may be a sort of passion 
for money-making in the heart of either, or both, 
but it is not the abiding passion. One would just 
as readily recommend the passion of shoe-mender 
as shoemaker; neither rises above the earth, and 
both die with the bodies of the two men. 

I have taken a typical example in each case out 
of the commercial world to make foundation for 
the axiomatic statement above, that neither con- 
tains the very highest element of soul-passion, 
which is a compound resultant of the finest forces 
of intellection and emotion, emanating from the 
fiery furnace of an inspired will. 

We naturally turn to some masters in science 
or art for an example of devotion to causes and 
aims that entitles it to the high rank of soul- 
passion. Well may we remove the sandals from 
our feet lest we offend the spirits that hover 
around the burning bush of science. For I honor 
and revere the men who have literally given their 



42 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

lives for the cause of knowledge, and not a few of 
whom have suffered a martyr's death. Beautiful 
to see the artist, all aglow with the passion for 
his ideal, and bowing his head in a last rest, with 
glazed eyes yet turned toward his beloved paint- 
ing. Impressive and tragic to note the chemist 
in his laboratory surrendering his life in the dis- 
covery of a new but deadly poisonous gas. Won- 
derful, wonderful! Stand with reverent heart in 
the presence of Charles Darwin, whose whole life 
was spent in the ardent pursuit of truth. He 
worked continuously, and, according to the testi- 
mony of his son, worked very rapidly, begrudg- 
ing every lost moment as being more precious 
than gold. And who, without deepest emotion, 
can behold Livingstone, in the heart of Africa, 
dying, with the last notes of his discoveries lying 
hard by, the words of which are fairly a-quiver 
with the life of his intense spirit? 

And yet, if the passion of these apostles of 
knowledge went no further than the cold 
chronicles of their studies and discoveries, it must 
subside and pass as being unable to burn with 
the luster of unfading suns. The really abiding 
passion is that which lives beyond any particular 
cycle of time, and which actually projects itself 
into an eternal world. 



THE ABIDING PASSION 43 

Measure by this standard of the abiding pas- 
sion, my cobbler; his honest, industrious life, with 
all of its attractiveness, is an evanescent thing, 
unless you might link it with a great passion, such 
as moved William Carey. He was just such a 
shoemaker as I have described, plus the real 
difference that lifts a man out of mediocrity into 
immortality; for while he tacked soles and sewed 
up rents in old leather, there flashed down into 
his heart a flame from the eternal altars which 
led him to turn his eyes toward far-off India, 
where the god of Lust ruled with relentless 
power a quarter billion slaves. As this flame 
burned in Carey's heart he plied himself to the 
study of the nations and their languages, and, 
following its ever-brightening light, went as a 
rescuer of the hopeless. His passion for their 
deliverance led him to fight for years for the 
abolishment of the inhuman suttee, and the glory 
of its passing belongs to the shoemaker. "^Shoe- 
maker, stick to your last," as a motto for the 
good repairing of old shoes is very well; but it 
can never manacle a life like that of the great 
missionary, whose chief glory was that he linked 
India with the universe by the cords of eternal 
happiness. 

Leap many steps higher on the ladder of time 



44 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

and consider Darwin. It is thoroughly altruistic 
of him, as he writes to a friend, to lament that, 
twenty million years hence, the earth will be 
frozen down to its fiery heart, and myriads of 
men, good, noble-souled humans, will have per- 
ished off the face of the earth for lack of food 
and warmth. Passion truly burns in his heart 
for his race, but I am persuaded that it falls 
short of the abiding sort, for a man with the 
abiding type can never give up, never let go the 
human family. He can not, with the blue-flame 
of his love for the race flashing through his brain, 
conceive of death and cold annihilation. 

And that other scientific man, Livingstone: 
He explored Africa, discovered lakes and rivers, 
opened up the dark continent to the world, and 
it is eminently just that, as a mere explorer, his 
remains should rest in Westminster Abbey. But 
the abiding passion was what carried Livingstone 
to Africa's heart; the passion for the freedom of 
men, the breaking of slave-shackles. This pas- 
sion kept him up, sustained him to the very last 
day, and Livingstone, dead upon his knees in 
prayer, in the lonely wilderness, but representing 
an undying cause, is mightier than a living man, 
linked to the carcass of temporal selfishness. 

It seems very clear, if the above statements are 



THE ABIDING PASSION 45 

In line with truth, that there can be no abiding 
passion apart from a profound racial love. There 
is no such thing as a great and intense passion for 
rocks, rivers, oceans, flowers, except as those 
things borrow human interest from the beings 
that quarry the rocks, explore the rivers, navigate 
the oceans, and inhale the fragrance of the 
flowers. Talk of Hugh Miller's passion for 
rocks; only go deep enough, drill through granite 
and sandstone strata, and finally you will strike 
into the folds and recesses of the human heart. 
And we think of Wordsworth as loving the 
flowers with a deep, personal feeling; ay, that 
is exactly what It is after all, for do we hear him 
saying. 



"To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears?" 



And where, pray, are the depths whose emotions 
can not at all be translated in the terms of tears? 
Verily, in the human soul. I like that saying of 
Saint Paul's: *' . . . the Spirit himself maketh in- 
tercession for us with groanings that can not be 
uttered." Beneath all our tongues and languages, 
our fine talk and oratory, our heartrending words 
along with mystic hints of the poet, there is a 



46 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

deep, inexpressible sob in the whole universe for 
the uplift of Man ! 

It requires a wonderful passion to sustain itself 
to life's end. Physical desire, sometimes called 
passion, is far from so doing. Yonder old, 
withered man looks in surprize, sometimes even 
with contempt and impatience, on the hot-blooded- 
ness of unrestrained youth. He has almost for- 
gotten. Even family ties become brittle, like 
oxidized, rotten iron rods, which once held great 
structures together. The wrinkled brow is 
scarcely lifted at news of death of some far-off 
relative or friend. It is too late to mourn, then; 
there are, in truth, no tear-springs from which 
to draw; long since they were dipt dry, down 
to the dregs which are only as ashes now. 

But just one object does keep him in touch 
with deep, subterranean springs; it is the redemp- 
tion scheme of the race, whereby men are freed 
from the overwhelming weight of sin. That 
same old man, apart from the crowd, out of 
touch with the passing world, has an abiding in- 
terest in the disenthrallment of men's hearts. 
'Tie is in the sere leaf, is childish, now; takes no 
notice of the affairs of life," the young and 
thoughtless are saying. They think him a dotard; 
in reality, they themselves are fools, since the 



THE ABIDING PASSION 47 

very things that they consider worth while are 
merest rubbish, while the real treasures of life 
are to them useless burdens that retard progress 
to the land of mirth. 

And herein lies the most powerful dynamic 
that ever thrilled and kept fresh to its purpose a 
human heart. In the fact of redemption as pro- 
mulgated in the Christian scheme there Is an un- 
dying and continuously rejuvenating force that 
causes us to marvel without ceasing as we ex- 
perience its application. The passion of a Chris- 
tian can never die, inasmuch as it emanates from 
those eternal sources of the universe that have 
their origin in the heart of God. And so, it be- 
comes perfectly logical to the reflecting mind that 
religious enthusiasm should glow with supernal 
brightness, even amid the ashes of dying physical 
embers. 

And I can not refrain here from declaring that 
one of the chief sustaining elements of the soul's 
abiding passion, emanating from the redemptive 
life of Jesus, is the constructive character of the 
work which such passion contemplates. I con- 
ceive that no work is so high and satisfying as 
the creative act, and it is the glory of that sensa- 
tion which is imparted to the human spirit as it 
grapples with other spirits and helps them past 



48 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

the throes of the new birth into the Kingdom of 
God. The mind so engaged is aglow with the 
zest, the ecstacy, the supreme joy of the universe. 
Surely, God could grant to the sons of men no 
loftier privilege than that of helping Him in the 
creation of a new empire, furnished with in- 
habitants who were created anew, cast in the mold 
of the Son of Man. If one could reconstruct, by 
divine help, the picture of a God turning new 
planets from His hand, and could see the tri- 
umphant glory of His face, it would then be 
possible to know the joy of a human soul, in the 
white heat of passionate love, lifting the dying 
soul of a brother into the realm of life. 

The abiding passion has one of its chief sup- 
ports in a sustained interest, which ever under- 
girds it. The soul never becomes weary in its 
zealous quest, never afraid or ashamed. Surfeit 
and enntii, those death-dealing cankers to myriads 
of lives, can get no hold on the heart. 

It is a fatal thing to lose interest In one's out- 
look, to cease to have a keen concern for the 
development of one's resources, the exalting of 
one's calling, the full accomplishment of one's 
task. Nobody can be absolutely safe from the 
attacks of satiety and disgust that prey upon so 
many mortals, except as the soul is aglow with 



THE ABIDING PASSION 49 

the abiding passion for the timeless welfare of 
men. 

One of the marvelous things about this master- 
passion is that it demands, inherently, by its very 
nature, conflict and struggle in order to perpetuate 
Itself. There was never a saint that went through 
the world without struggle and hardship. This 
conflict feeds the flame that burns for the world, 
and sets an example to others that is ever a 
source of Inspiration and encouragement. The 
fiercest warfare is that which is waged on a 
spiritual basis; the severest of all battles is that 
which rages upon the plains of a soul aflame with 
divine passion. 

The impassioned soul is, by its universal sym- 
pathy for men, the truly cosmopolitan spirit of 
the globe. No commercial or scientific aims can 
lead a man into a deep and cooperative sympathy 
with all races and tribes. The castes of India 
will not yield to material forces alone; only the 
bat!ering-rams of a spiritual host can complete 
the destruction of such adamantine walls. But 
the impassioned soul, illumined by eternal fires, 
is restrained by no boundary lines in the realm of 
creation, and the sphere of her sovereignty shall 
extend as far as discovery goes. 



Chapter V , 
BONDAGE AND FREEDOM 

DESPITE the glory of the abiding passion as 
a heaven-born gift, I often reflect with 
solicitude upon the dangers that threaten its pos- 
sessors. Religion offers the richest of all fields 
for the nurture of wisdom, but it is sadly true 
that folly springs like a mushroom out of the 
same rich soil unless constant guard is exercised 
against it. The religionist who has lost his bear- 
ings is of all men most to be pitied. And the 
course between a fanatical abandon to divine 
guidance, apart from profound reflection, and a 
conceited self-consciousness that deems outside in- 
fluence needless, is indeed difficult to pursue un- 
der certain circumstances. And yet it is a possi- 
bility; and the possibility lies in the conscious 
sovereignty of the mind, which, while recognizing 
the supreme rulership of the Sovereign of the 
universe, nevertheless looks upon that sovereignty 
delegated to the individual as being a most sacred 
trust. No man has a right to cease thinking for 
himself. God not only permits but demands of 

50 



BONDAGE AND FREEDOM 51 

the individual intellectual independence. He that 
permits others to think for him is no longer free, 
and so, in its high and true sense, is no longer a 
man. 

The anthropoid ape, with a brain strikingly 
like man's, lives in the woods, feeds upon the 
wild fruits that grow there, climbs tree-trunks, 
leaps in frolicsome mood from limb to limb, or 
wath evident delight swings pendant from favorite 
boughs by hands marvelously like our own. But 
the ape dies, leaving the forest just the same, 
while the course of brook and river remains un- 
changed. If he had only possest reason, the ape 
could have lived in a mansion and turned the 
wilderness into a city. Just because man thinks, 
he cuts down trees which the ape left intact, lives 
in a house instead of the naked forest, builds 
cities where jungles grew, makes deserts blossom, 
drains swamps, turns the course of rivers, navi- 
gates oceans, and makes the very air a medium 
of transportation. To trace what thought has 
done is to go the whole course of civilization to 
the present; to prophesy what it will yet do is to 
lay oneself liable to the charge of being a fan- 
tastic dreamer or an apostle of wild vagaries. 

And yet, with all that thought has done, it is 
far more important that we ourselves should 



52 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

know how to think rather than know the sub- 
stance of what others have thought. To be able 
to think for oneself is far better than to follow 
the beaten path of other minds; a nugget of truth 
which one has digged by one's own effort out of 
the mine of knowledge Is of more value to Its 
possessor than a whole heap of truths that one 
finds assorted by the wayside. Knowing how to 
think Is equivalent to being Independent in one's 
thought. 

But It needs to be stated at the outset that by 
Independence In thinking I do not mean absolutely 
and unrelated original thought, for I very 
seriously question whether any man has ever 
achieved such an end, or could achieve It by his 
mightiest effort. Who knows if he ever had an 
original thought? He who credits himself with 
such a feat is likely to find this seeming discovery 
In some volume as old as Aristotle — that Is, If 
one means by original thought that which no one 
else ever had. But If one means by the term, 
original thought, the quality of originality so far 
as it concerns the thinker himself, and his methods 
of work, the application may be quite befitting. 
A vigorous, active mind may acquire much know- 
ledge In a truly independent manner. If we take 
fearlessness and self-confidence within the bounds 



BONDAGE AND FREEDOM 53 

of our definition, and the benefits to such a mind 
are of inestimable value. 

A fearless, self-confident attitude, therefore, 
lies at the base of all independent thinking. Not 
every man who can fearlessly execute the thoughts 
of others can, with equal boldness, assert his own, 
or even freely think his own thoughts. Some 
there are who would put on the armor of Saul 
and go forth with boldness, who would not dare 
meet the giant with a sling of their own making, 
nor feel well armed with a few stones gathered 
from the brook by themselves. We are literally 
afraid to think in many of the important spheres 
of conduct. 

One field of thought where men tread lightly 
and are afraid is that of politics. Comparatively 
few voters are independent in the matter of 
suffrage. They may go to the polls with much 
zest and loud hurrahing, but some one else has 
made out the ticket and prepared the campaign 
thunder. It requires an amount of courage that 
the majority do not possess to prepare one's own 
ballot and do one's own thundering. 

Equally true it is that most of the world is 
afraid to think in that widest of all realms, re- 
ligion. We are what we are, religiously, because 
we happen to be born heirs to certain tenets and 



54 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

beliefs. Sometimes we look longingly at the 
realm of freedom, but are prevented entering it 
through fear. 

Not a few, likewise, are possest of certain ele- 
ments of moral cowardice. They see things that 
disgust and sicken them, but they are afraid to 
break the images of their classes. Many a 
woman looks with longing eye to the companion- 
ship of a true, lofty soul in a different circle, but 
is hindered in her desire to go to her through 
fear alone. 

Even more lamentable still, perhaps, than many 
of the existing forms of bondage is the fact that 
most students in our schools and colleges do not 
acquire that independence in their methods' of 
thought that entitles them to a place in the prin- 
cipality of freedom. The student is really serv- 
ing an apprenticeship while mastering the 
curriculum of his school, and if, like Wilhelm 
Meister, he can be granted the diploma of a free 
man when once the course is finished, he is to 
be warmly praised. Happy the man who, coming 
out from the cloister of learning, to knock for ad- 
mission into the circle of world-toilers, can say, 
'T come as an independent thinker and actor." 

One of the depressing things the teacher has 
to contemplate in the character of his students 



BONDAGE AND FREEDOM 55 

is a species of fetish-worship which ties them 
down to the letter of the law In the books. Not 
that I would discount the book as a criterion of 
accuracy, for knowledge, to be knowledge at all, 
must first be accurate. But the accuracy of an 
automaton is far less to be admired than the ac- 
curacy of a free mind, untrammeled by bias and 
irksome rule. It is a lack of courage that makes 
the student in algebra turn nervously ever and 
anon to the back of his book to get the assurance 
of the answer to be found there. He shows clearly 
that he Is afraid to trust his own work. The 
girl who eagerly seeks her companion to know 
how she construes a lesson in Virgil Is yet too 
timid for the hard tasks of life where she will 
be thrown upon her own resources, there to 
triumph through courage and strength of self- 
confidence, or to fail through the cowardice and 
weakness of self-distrust. 

Our object in subjecting ourselves to the study 
of books and the mastery of curricula of certain 
institutions of learning is to become free. In- 
tellectually, not enslaved. If one comes out from 
this tutelage the possessor of many facts of his- 
tory and science, and yet afraid to think inde- 
pendently, one has become a slave, not a free man 
or woman. The highest freedom that is known 



56 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

or that can be Imagined is intellectual freedom. 
There came a time in history when the Romans 
became masters to the Greeks, but the Greek 
slave, tho bodily in duress, became master to his 
master because he was his master's teacher. 

There is a bondage to books that is servile. 
The right use of books is of prime importance to 
the student. He should love them as his friends 
and companions, use them as his faithful servants 
and tools, but serve them as his masters, never. 
Take your book-slave, and consider his state of 
body and mind. If he would have a drink of 
water, he must run to the book to inquire what 
the analysis is, and what the books say. If the 
books say, do not drink, he allows his lips to 
parch and his tongue to crack with thirst. If he 
would evolve a philosophy of life, he must turn 
to a certain page to see what a favorite work on 
sociology would declare; or, if he would have an 
ultimatum on capital and labor, '*To the book! 
to the book!" he cries, and it is settled as he dog- 
matically and smilingly points his finger to what 
the Absolute says. To him there is no interpre- 
tation of a Scripture without a commentary and 
the standards of theology. The book-slave never 
gets beyond the country in which he was born, 
and even that land is not possest in his own name ; 



BONDAGE AND FREEDOM 57 

for he exists there only by permission of certain 
feudal lords who hold him in vassalage. He has 
a mortal terror of treading the unknown lands 
of thought unaccompanied by his liege lord. His 
creed shuts out from consciousness the fact that 
the grandest heroes of the world have been those 
that have prest into the forests, and across the 
deserts of life, alone, and, after rough voyages, 
have planted the standard of truth in countries 
beyond some unknown sea. 

I would not be understood as looking with 
scorn upon books, for I place the highest value 
upon them. They are the student's best friends 
and his most useful servants, and they do more 
for him than all other friends or servants so long 
as they are used of him in these capacities. I 
can think of no picture more highly ideal than 
that of an independent student, in his library, 
looking affectionately — shall I not say it? — upon 
the loved volumes on the shelves. Ruskin likens 
books to princes and queens, mutely gazing upon 
their owners, and proffering their companionship. 

I rejoice to say that some of my warmest 
friends are among the books with which I asso- 
ciate daily. I have but to run the eye along 
yonder shelf, and I see two friends among the 
poets — Wordsworth and Tennyson. And there 



58 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

come days when I simply must have converse with 
them. How many times, when pent up in the 
confines of the city, with nerves a-tingle from its 
clang of noises, have I sought and found the 
peace of the country in Wordsworth's **Lines," 
written near Tintern Abbey! Or, some sonnet, 
some tender little tribute to lowly celandine or 
daisy has brought me the needed rest and solace. 
And my heart has found encouragement, as I 
have opened that volume of Tennyson, and 
turned to the worn leaves where I read with a 
feeling of uplift the deep soul-utterances of 
**Locksley Hall." For that poem, mark you, is 
no mere sentiment, or puling wail of a love-sick 
youth, but rather the struggle of a broken spirit 
to gain its footing again in the world of heroic 
service. Often, too, has my heart been steadied 
in times of doubt as I have followed another's 
struggles and triumphs in *'The Two Voices," or, 
as in that longer poem, **In Memoriam," I have 
battled against the mystery of sorrow into a 
reconciliation to the divine will. 

And what lover of books does not have his 
favorite master in fiction, to whom he goes anon 
for refreshment as he feels the burdens of life 
grow heavy? And there, too, is some old classic, 
perhaps from Greek or Roman, which is golden 



BONDAGE AND FREEDOM 59 

to us, and works like magic in bringing one into 
the normal attitude of mind and heart. Times 
there are when the soul literally yearns for com- 
panionship and help which there is no human 
hand to offer. To such a being, books, messages 
from the world's greatest dead, become one of 
the priceless boons of existence, bringing the fel- 
lowship of redemption from despair. 

Independence in thinking, like the independence 
of a country, does not mean the isolating of one- 
self from another's influence, but the wise mas- 
tery of one's own mind to such an extent that it 
can best obtain help from other minds. The 
original thirteen colonies of America fought hard 
for independence, and won it by great sacrifice of 
life and blood. But that does not mean that the 
United States to-day receives no benefits from 
England; indeed, our country could scarcely con- 
ceive of a commercial, literary or religious ex- 
istence apart from the direct influence of the 
mother country. We hold the citadels of power, 
certainly; our guns bristle from every fort, as 
men-of-war fly our flag on all seas and under all 
suns for the defense of that precious thing we 
call liberty. But what would become of us if 
vessels of peace, laden with commerce and good- 
will, ceased to pass betwixt us and England? As 



6o THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

our country is independent of England, and yet 
dependent upon her in so many ways, so one's 
mind may be independent of the tyranny of books, 
but wisely dependent upon them for needed sup- 
plies and influence. 

As a youth I knew a hard old schoolmaster. 
When he wished to vent his wrath upon a boy 
against whom he had no just grievance, he bade 
the object of his ill-will, upon a certain occasion, 
'4ook at the sun until he saw stars." Going to 
the door the lad looked, with blinking eyes, and, 
half-blinded and dizzy, returned crestfallen to the 
master. *^I saw no stars," said he. ''Then look 
again," commanded the master. The lad looked, 
and again with tear-filled eyes, declared most hon- 
estly that he saw none. ''Well, look till you do 
see stars!" stormed the master of the ferule. 
Whereupon, the ingenious youth, taking recourse 
to falsehood, upon glancing up at the sun the 
third time profest quite glibly, "Yes, sir, I see 
stars." "Aha! aha!" chuckled the master 
fiendishly, "You have now told me a falsehood. 
Hold out your knuckles, you wretch, and I will 
make them tingle!" 

I am glad to believe that schoolmasters of 
that type are very rare, and that such harshness 
belongs to a day that is gone. But I am sure 



BONDAGE AND FREEDOM 6i 

that it is quite possible, even in this golden time, 
to be the base servant of books to such an extent 
that when the books command the reader to see 
stars, he will, blinking and squinting and rubbing 
his eyes say, nevertheless, ''Oh, yes, I see stars 
and they are so beautiful!" Such an unintelligent 
and insincere acquiescence is falsehood of the 
most subtle sort, for it cheats the deluded con- 
fessor out of that richest of all possessions, mental 
integrity. 

Dr. Corson has somewhere compared the brain 
of a certain type of educated man to a well-kept 
hayloft. In that storehouse of the farmer there 
are bundles of oats and fodder, bales of hay and 
other provender, which the owner can get on de- 
mand. If he wants oats for his horse, he knows 
where to get them; in the dark, likewise, he can 
lay hand upon a bundle of fodder, since every- 
thing is In its place. In like manner, the me- 
chanically educated man under consideration has 
a well-stored mind; Greek roots and Latin verbs 
and mathematical formulae are all carefully 
placed In their respective corners. If you ask 
the owner of this brain-loft to construe a Greek 
or Latin sentence, he has but to reach up to the 
proper compartment for the rules of grammar 
and syntax, and the work Is done. If you call 



62 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

for the solution of a problem In mathematics he 
can reach Into the '^loft" and find a formula by 
which he can perform the task. But ask him to 
preach a sermon on the text, *'I am come that ye 
might have life," and he will tell you that he 
never learned how, and therefore, can not do It. 

Such a person, tho trained to acquire facts, is 
only a slave to his acquirements, and knows not 
the freedom of a liberated mind. In striking con- 
trast to such a human machine Is that Individual 
who acquires facts of knowledge unceasingly, but 
who takes the formal truth so obtained down Into 
the laboratories of God, and there welds them, 
over the blue-flame of divine love, Into a glowing 
compound with the Spirit of the universe. The 
resultant Is a mind charged with Intelligent en- 
thusiasm; a soul filled with the dynamics of the 
storm and yet capable of orderly movement, ex- 
pending all Its forces for constructive develop- 
ment, wasting none In useless devastation. 

The age Is In need of a religion that has reason 
at Its base, a spirituality that combines rational 
principles with supra-rational elements, thus mak- 
ing a compound that commends Itself to God and 
man. That type of religion which represents a 
state of fervid ebullition, and uses spirituality as 
a safety-valve for surplus steam-power is not de- 



BONDAGE AND FREEDOM 63 

sirable. Of that we have had quite enough. It 
may be well for the race to work off its surplus 
energy through football and other vigorous forms 
of athletics, to allow large freedom to the 
imagination in relieving the mind of the sensation 
of over-f ulness ; but to turn our religion into an 
exhibition of spiritual gymnastics is totally abhor- 
rent to any well-poised, reflecting mind. 



Chapter VI 
AS A MAN THINKETH 

THE important objective of individuality as 
exemplified in intellectual independence is 
basic to the attainment of a new selfhood, much 
as the first rung of a ladder Is essential as a 
medium of reaching a second rung. The whole 
universe is so related that no one planet or star 
could exist alone, altho each orb possesses a noble 
individuality that Is separate and distinct from 
that of all others. And as this entire universe 
represents an expanded whole as an essential 
unity, preserving at the same time the integrity of 
component parts, so does the infinite Mind of 
the Spiritual universe represent an Indestructible 
unity, within which the myriads of human minds 
find their Individuality. The objective of each 
of these Individual minds Is to discover Its proper 
relation to the Infinite Spirit. Until that balance 
and relation Is found, the mind of a man Is much 
like a planet would be If It should veer from Its 
orbit and thus lose equilibrium with its sun. De- 
struction would of necessity ensue. 

64 



AS A MAN THINKETH 65 

The finite runs the risk of losing its supreme 
opportunity through a terrible clash with the 
Infinite. Granted a proper equilibrium with the 
Infinite, and the finite mind has the privilege of 
a destiny In every way glorious. 

Viewed In this light, we may consistently think 
of man as being In a certain sense the perfection 
of his own creation. Not only Is he a co-worker 
with God In bringing about a new creation as 
pertains to others, but he Is God's first lieutenant 
In the re-creation of himself. He Is moving 
along the orbit of thought toward a central Mind, 
from which all thought emanates. As man ap- 
proaches this Mind, his experience Is analagous 
to that of a metal which advances through In- 
creasing stages of temperature toward the fusing 
point. For the soul of man reaches a white heat 
of Intensity as It touches the mind of God, and 
at last reaches a fusing point ; man dwells In God, 
and God In man. For only by thinking the 
thoughts of the Creator can humanity become 
like Him. 

But looking about me, I must take an Inventory 
of my resources as well as responsibilities. If I 
am to reach my new destiny along the path of 
thought. Is It necessary for me to consider any 
other factor In destiny than that of spirit or pure 



66 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

thought? That might all depend upon the fact 
of the existence of something other than mind. 
Is there aught else? Am I to strive after an 
idealism that eliminates matter as a negligible 
quantity in the higher reaches of the spirit? But 
if matter is only an appearance, it does not neces- 
sarily follow that I am to neglect it in my calcula- 
tions; if it is a reality, then it must become some 
sort of a factor in the processes by which I am 
to reach my true relation to Him who made both 
matter and spirit. It may be that, granting the 
non-reality of matter. Its apparent existence is a 
workable essential with which to reach God; that 
without the appearance as a blind, the soul would 
be overcome with the dazzling brightness of the 
great Reality. 

I would briefly, then, sum up a simple philoso- 
phy of mind and matter : Certain mental scientists 
are fond of saying there is nothing in the world 
except mind. Most of us, however, are dualists^ 
and think of life as embracing two entities, one 
material and the other spiritual. I confess to 
being in this latter class. For while to my mind 
the material part of the world is but a shell for 
the spirit, I am bound to accord the shell an 
essential place under the present conditions of 
existence. No one ever saw a rose's beauty ex- 



AS A MAN THINKETH 67 

cept in the rose's petals; likewise, the only beauti- 
ful soul any one ever knew was living in "a 
house of clay." Angels are no doubt beautiful 
to those that can see them, but no one can see a 
spirit until one enters a spiritual world. 

And yet, for all that, we are agreed that the 
moral side of life is entirely inherent in the 
spiritual part. A stone or tree can not sin, neither 
can the hand or tongue or foot of a human being. 
The attitude of mind is the determining factor as 
to the rightness or wrongness of an act. If the 
mind's attitude is bad, the body, like an automa- 
ton, does bad things; the fingers filch, the 
tongue swears, the eye beholds and the ear hears 
the foul. But if the mind be honest, the fingers 
will never take what belongs to another; if it be 
truly reverent, the tongue will not be profane; if 
truly good, the eye will see through the shell of 
badness to the inner goodness, while the ears will 
translate the tuneless jargon of the world Into 
veritable heavenly music. The mind carries the 
body around with it as a servant, and *'the ser- 
vant is not greater than his lord." 

Is a man responsible for what he thinks? Do 
men and God hold him accountable? Most as- 
suredly. Then, what is it that thinks? It is the 
mind, the ego. The brain Is only a medium for 



68 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

thought. The personal self is responsible at the 
bar of the eternal Truth for the way it uses this 
medium. The account must be rendered with the 
utmost precision, for when the mind thinks a 
certain thing, the brain registers it, and that single 
registration is an influencing factor in causing the 
mind to entertain the same thought again. The 
two — brain and mind — become reciprocal in their 
influence. A mind that is bad can not become 
good until cell-changes have taken place in the 
brain. For that reason, a bad, old man is very 
difficult to render good, and a good man, who 
has advanced to maturity, stands like a Gibraltar 
against onslaughts of evil. The bending of the 
young tree until it has become fixt in its shape 
is a favorite figure, used as an analogy between 
the tender plant and tender youth. If a boy can 
only get through his teens clean-minded, and free 
from bad habits, we feel that he is safe — and he 
generally is. It is simply the result of law, in- 
exorably fixt but wondrously kind. 

What a man thinks determines, therefore, what 
he is. He is what he thinks, for there is really no 
more to him. He has a material body and brain, 
but these are totally subservient to what he thinks. 
The brain can change only as it is directed to 
change, and when it has reached a certain age It 



AS A MAN THINKETH 69 

is very slow to unlearn the lessons of youth. The 
reflex centers have become so well established 
after a certain age that they refuse to be over- 
thrown. 

Thought acts like a boomerang — it always 
comes back just as it went out, no better, no 
worse. If It Is kind and clean, It comes back so; 
If hateful and Impure, It returns to the sender to 
make him more bitter and filthy. "Let him that 
is filthy be filthy still." We need to take earnest 
heed to our everyday thoughts, for In the 
progress of thinking we are only manufacturing 
ourselves over again, according to either a better 
or worse pattern than we formerly had. The 
brain refuses to stultify Itself; It will be true to 
Its teaching, even tho the teaching be bad. Con- 
tinued lessons In debauchery are handed back to 
the master. Mind, which at last reaches a point 
where It Is mastered by Its own servant — a thing 
not unheard-of In many phases of existence. 
Every man Is, to a large extent, the arbiter of his 
own destiny, especially In so far as that destiny re- 
lates to essential elements of character. There 
are vastly different brains to start with; some are 
coarse, some fine ; some shaped for murder, others 
for kindness and love. But if taken under the 
right kind of tutelage soon enough, the regnant 



70 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

mind can turn the brain of a malefactor into that 
of a benefactor of the race, and the brain of a 
rogue into that of **an honest man, the noblest 
work of God." For this brain is the workshop, 
the mind is the smith, and thought is the product, 
whether it be delicate watch-spring, or the crude 
butcher-knife. The tendency, however, is to spe- 
cialize, and if allowed to ply their butcher-knife 
business too long, both smith and shop will 
eventually become unfitted for the manufacture 
of watch-springs. 

If men are held accountable for what they 
think, the evidence is prima facie that they can 
determine what they think in some considerable 
sense, else the law of responsibility would be 
inherently wrong. One is often heard to lament, 
**I can not govern my thoughts; they simply come 
and possess me, whether I will or no." But this 
statement is not true. It takes the hardest effort 
ever put forth by the will to govern the thoughts, 
but the task may be accomplished masterfully. It 
can be done, however, only under certain circum- 
stances, and it is necessary to see to it that these 
circumstances are existent. Law is regnant there 
as everywhere else. No man can have wholesome 
thoughts if he choose surroundings that con- 
tinually suggest the bad. We are all kindergarten 



AS A MAN THINKETH 71 

pupils and shall ever use simple objects as means 
of knowledge. We can not frequent places where 
evil IS supreme and expect to remain intact. If 
we make companions of books and people that 
are lacking in nobility of character, we thereby 
renounce the hope of rising to knighthood. But 
if we select such companionships in nature, and 
among books and people as will logically be sug- 
gestive of right and sound thinking, the mind, by 
law, follows the easier path. Will is a mighty 
being, but she needs every good angel to brace her 
up in her heavenly aspirations. 

**As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he," does 
not suggest chance-thought; it indicates a clearly 
marked course and purpose. True, men may 
allow chance-circumstances to determine their 
thought, and so, the quality of life, but this is not 
a course that we must necessarily copy. If I am 
ever to have a high quality of character, I must 
deliberately choose to have it, and follow up the 
choice with a systematic effort, lasting through 
my whole life, toward the acquirement of good- 
ness. If a man is *'as he thinketh," the conclu- 
sion Is inevitable that if he should cease to think, 
he would cease to be. Of course, it is impossible 
to cease entirely to think, yet it is quite easy to 
stop thinking vigorously. We not infrequently 



72 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

see a good man seemingly deteriorate in character, 
especially toward life's close. The cause? He 
jfirst of all deteriorates in virility of thought. I 
have seen bright college men after getting into 
the routine of life, drop out of studious habits, 
and glide down to the lower levels of thought 
with the totally uneducated. The gold of charac- 
ter is molded at the mint of thought, but even 
gold will wear eventually, and if the mill ceases 
to turn as of yore, the current coin becomes scarce. 
The only method of keeping up a large circula- 
tion lies in coining more. 

A man's real wealth inheres In what he thinks 
and how much he thinks. The mind must be oc- 
cupied In some sort of fashion, and If It be not 
assigned the great and noble task It will take up 
the light and trivial one automatically. If the 
owner does not drive her maid-servant to hard 
work she will frisk and frolic on the green of 
mere pleasure, or wander Into back alleys, there to 
revel In sluice-ponds of vice. The quality of one's 
thought may be rich, altogether good, or it may 
be poor, coarse and Inferior. There Is a deal of 
thought In the world comparable to certain fields 
— not vicious or bad, but simply barren and poor. 
This sort of thought needs what the poor land 
needs — some new ingredients. I believe that 



AS A MAN THINKETH 73 

most of the poverty in the quality of thought 
arises from lack of interest, and from indifference. 
If men only concentrated, put intensity into their 
thought-fields, there would result a more luxuriant 
growth of products. Like skim-milk, all of the 
real richness of original thought has gone out by 
reason of standing. Constant shaking up is 
needed; a stirring of the vessel to its heart. 

Strange to say, many men have had a few rich 
thoughts, and then dropt into seemingly hopeless 
poverty. They have made the impression that 
all reserve was used up, or that nothing but an 
inferior quality remained. That is one of the 
sad things in human experience: a sense of ex- 
haustion — which all have felt, in some degree. 
Some one has said that Coleridge gave to the 
world only one complete work — *^The Rime of 
the Ancient Mariner" — out of all that he began, 
but this one poem was indeed pure gold. But 
we all have a feeling of regret at wasted genius, 
believing that whoever could give to the race a 
treasure so rich as that matchless poem, might 
have digged up more from the hidden veins of 
the soul. A patch of ground in the mind rich 
enough to bring forth one luxuriant harvest will 
yield others if it be watered and tended. The 
valley of the Nile never has become poor, be- 



74 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

cause of continuous yearly accretions by inunda- 
tion. Every rich valley of the mind can ex- 
perience a like fertilization if the owner will only 
open the flood-gates between himself and the in- 
finite world, whose vast reservoirs are at the dis- 
posal of all of God's men. 

The average mind may acquire great wealth 
by working zealously. A dozen or two of books, 
persistent application, joyous effort, brings the 
sure resultant — riches. There is no excuse for 
poverty of mind. Even the person too poor to 
have many books still has the sine qua non of all 
wealth — a brain, and a spirit behind it. If he 
but use what he has he is sure to possess more and 
more of the true riches. There is only one sort 
of poverty that is absolutely without excuse — that 
of soul-poverty. There are conditions beyond 
which I can not mount to procure material goods, 
but no obstacle is insurmountable between me and 
m^ental treasures. If I live and die a pauper it 
is my own fault, since no mortal can form a trust 
on good thinking nor create a combine by which 
a monopoly of mental products is acquired. Each 
soul is a sovereign whose realm reaches as far as 
industry and desire will extend it. 

Of all riches in life the greatest is one's own 
self. It keeps us wondering, trying to under- 



AS A MAN THINKETH 75 

stand. The soul rises like a sphinx, inscrutable, 
mysterious, on the plains of consciousness. Seen 
from one angle she seems to be one thing, from 
another point of view something vastly different. 
To-day she presents herself as an archangel of 
noblest purposes, while to-morrow she dons the 
garb of some evil genius. And yet, if I might 
call the soul a temple, and if every thought that 
passes through the brain were an entity, a part of 
the temple's furnishings, I could walk through 
the corridors and halls of the great structure and 
tell just what I am, for, *^as a man thinketh in 
his heart, so is he." I should find every splendid 
rafter or rotten beam, each perfect painting or 
every miserable daub to be identically what I had 
placed there as master of the house. And seeing 
all of the good and bad, if I were wise, I should 
resolve never again to put in the house any paint- 
ing except the finest, with the light of heaven shin- 
ing upon it, nor ever to place aught of wooden 
work in the whole structure save that wrought 
out in Lebanon's mountains where finest cedars 
grow. 



Chapter VII 

THE NASCENT THOUGHT 

IN the preceding pages I have discust mental 
activity more from its standpoint of quality 
than from that of method. It is necessary, there- 
fore, to look into this latter principle, and in- 
quire as to the best means of utilizing the product 
of thought. If the output of the mind were 
analogous to the output of a factory, and capable 
of being stored away like a stock of shoes or hats 
we might build up great fortunes in mind-stuffs 
and have a wonderful deal of wealth in ideas laid 
by on cold storage for future use. We could be 
just as unmethodical as we chose in thinking, and 
could lay by half-wrought concepts for future de- 
velopment. It would be as easy to carry thoughts 
around as it is for the market-women to carry her 
eggs to the trading mart in a basket. The most 
indolent man on earth could, on occasion, flash 
thoughts as precious as diamonds, having, per- 
chance, gathered up a handful when the germs of 
laziness were inactive. But certain laws prevent 
such prodigal or improvident use of talent, and 
to these we may well turn our attention. 

1^ 



THE NASCENT THOUGHT 77 

The atom, when first released from the grasp 
of its fellow, is called nascent. Being new-born, 
it really begins a new life. And the chemist tells 
us that only when this atom is young in its free- 
dom is it strong and active. If it can possibly lay 
hold on some other free atom of the right kind, 
it will form a combination and help build a new 
molecule. The sooner it gets in touch with this 
other friendly atom the more stable is the com- 
bination, but the longer it remains uncomblned 
the weaker is its hold upon the new companion. 
In even an atom's life the factor of time performs 
an important part. 

Turning from the scientific to the psychic realm, 
we find there the analogous law that the nascent 
thought is the strongest, the most able to form 
combinations and accomplish work. The new 
thought, while the heat of enthusiasm is glowing 
in the brain, readily and eagerly does its tasks, 
but if the thought becomes old, it seems to lose its 
power. Thoughts, like men, become debilitated 
from want of activity. Men who do great things 
in life follow up their nascent thoughts, and grap- 
ple with a ready hand problems that only the new 
thought can solve. Men that do little in the 
world are those that nurse their thoughts and 
keep them stored up like bottled gases until they 



78 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

are old and stale, and have lost their pristine 
force. Like Hamlet, these men are dreamers, 
who may have purposes clear-cut enough, but do 
not carry them into execution. 

One of the deep joys of life is that of evolving 
new thoughts. Other men may have had similar 
thoughts, but to the individual that generates them 
belongs true paternity. They are his own chil- 
dren, and as such are precious to him. That is, 
to the normal, rightly adjusted man. Only a 
monstrosity neglects his offspring and allows them 
to become old and dwarfed in the realms of their 
birth, without doing aught to push the world for- 
ward. The joy of thinking is supreme when these 
thoughts are put to work, and like mighty toilers 
are made to become producers. To see one's 
thoughts materializing into great factories, stores, 
machines or grain-fields kindles a divine fire of 
delight in one's eyes. 

A great moral responsibility inheres in thinking. 
A man has no more right to allow his thoughts 
to die without accomplishing their work than a 
parent has to permit his children to grow up in 
idleness and bear no world-burdens. Since think- 
ing differentiates human from brute, the power of 
thought is the Creator's pledge of favoritism to 
man. And he who does not highly prize his lofty 



THE NASCENT THOUGHT 79 

position is grossly ungrateful; more, he Is guilty 
of insult to the Author of his being. 

Some souls that have worried a great deal and 
thought a little, fancy that thinking produces 
weariness, and consequently is to be indulged in 
parsimoniously. But it is worry, not thought, that 
produces the insupportable weariness of life. 
Thinking is only the natural outlet of pent-up 
mental energies, and is good for the normal man. 
The proper exercise of every function of our being 
is not only harmless; it is beneficial. If, as has 
been stated before, there are two billion cells in 
the human brain, not even the most active thinker 
can hope to use all of them in their every possible 
combination. At best, the brain may be said to 
have much territory that has not been utilized at 
the end of even a long career of toil. No man, 
in view of this fact, can justly fear that he will 
overdo his thinking powers, or overdraw his 
thought resources. A reservoir of perennial, 
ceaseless joy is at the command of every normal 
human being. All he has to do Is to tap the 
fountain and let it run. 

In what has been indicated above we have a 
triple key, a veritable open-sesame for all doors of 
achievement by men. That is, through mental 
activity work is done, happiness realized, and 



8o THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

moral responsibility discharged. These three 
phases of life cover the whole gamut of human 
experience. 

The power of unfoldment lies in the nascent 
thought. It drops sweetness as the maple sheds 
juices when first tapped; gives out aroma like the 
freshly crusht rose; sends forth refreshing 
waters like the mountain spring, which is purest 
and clearest at its source. But the old incision in 
the tree gives no tribute, the long-crusht rose is 
putrid, and the fountain's waters are corrupted 
far from the parent rock. To elaborate on the 
unfoldment, the more our fresh, new thoughts are 
utilized, the more do we have, as fresh and new 
as their forerunners were. Nothing save a new 
thought can beget a new thought. The man who 
uses his old sermon or lecture too long, finally 
wears it out by losing interest in it himself. Is 
it wonderful that those who hear him turn the 
smooth, well-worn phrases grow weary, too ? The 
only way for the speaker to escape the ennui 
which he suffers is to get up a new speech. Then, 
as his own blood tingles with fresh life and joy, 
the pulse of his hearers also beats faster. 

Some men seem wondrously stingy with their 
thoughts. So precious do they appear that they 
are put on the shelf to rot and waste. The finder 



THE NASCENT THOUGHT 8i 

of a new thought may lay it away in a napkin for 
safe keeping, only thereby to lose it. Let no man 
fear to use his thoughts, his very newest and best, 
for he will have more and better thoughts the 
next day. More : each one as it arrives will come 
like the bee from his morning rounds among new- 
blown flowers — laden with fresh sweets. 

The more a man thinks, the more he does, for 
nothing performs work but thought. The bands 
and wheels and pulleys of a machine do not, in 
the absolute sense, work; it is the thought of the 
man who put them together. The engine, puffing 
and groaning before forty freight cars is not 
doing work — thought pulls the load. The horse 
drawing the plow is not the real worker; for the 
man at the handles furnishes the thought-energy 
which is the sine qua non of all accomplishment. 
The man who is not a thought-producer can never 
be called a world-worker of high grade. Vice 
versa, the man who thinks, in the true sense, is a 
worker whether his body moves or not. And to 
any one who thinks long enough and deeply 
enough all tasks eventually yield. It is impossible 
to think seriously without some measure of 
achievement. 

No man who thinks in a normal way, ever 
evolving fresh thoughts, can have a gloomy time 



82 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

in life. Only as he begins to think again the old 
thoughts, to nurse them over-fondly, does he lose 
the zest and enjoyment that justly may be his. 
New thoughts, like new red blood, bring a glow 
to the cheek and health to the countenance. May 
the Fates deliver us from the brooding man, re- 
volving In a diseased mind the imaginations or 
fancies of wrongs sustained in the past, until his 
whole soul is poisoned as the system is vitiated by 
re-breathing the same air. 

The law of reproduction In the realm of 
thought gives rise to an ever-enlarging world of 
happiness. The infinite field of mind becomes an 
infinite field of enjoyment. Always there are new 
mountains to be scaled, new oceans to be navi- 
gated, new lands to be cultivated, and the zest 
and pleasure of It Is always keen and fresh. We 
may envy the long-ago discoverers of Islands and 
continents because of the delight afforded them, 
and may mournfully declare there are no more 
to find. But In the realms of mind there are 
wonder-worlds that stretch everywhere: we carry 
them locked In our brains, and if we will but 
batter down the barring doors we may enter those 
lands and sail those seas with the joy of true 
discoverers. 

The nascent thought contains the power of a 



THE NASCENT THOUGHT 83 

continuous revelation as to moral obligation. 
Neglected duty produces spiritual callousness. 
The only way to get out of the darkness Is to 
press toward the rising sun. To do one's duty 
to-day is a necessary step toward knowing it to- 
morrow. Those with faith in the race believe 
that the intuition of the hour is the surest guide 
to right doing. This statement is not meant to 
discredit careful judgment or to encourage rash 
action. Far from that; but the gist of the creed 
IS that prompt action In moral conduct Is, within 
Itself, a great moral principle. Since truth is ab- 
solute, no man has a right to dicker with it. 
Delay causes doubts and fears to arise, while 
prompt action strengthens moral purpose. Even 
a trembling ethical judgment may be steadied by 
a bold step toward executing It. **One good turn 
deserves another," and It will have another, too. 
Good deeds follow each other. 

A plantation in the wilderness Is established 
by first cutting the forest trees from a small patch 
of land and there planting the grain. Around 
this opening more trees are cut the next year, and 
the pioneer's horizon is widened. Other grain 
Is planted, and orchards and vineyards are set 
out. Upon the fruits of the cleared land the 
planter Is able to sustain life and strength upon 



84 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

which to wage the battle against an ever-receding 
foe. Likewise, the nascent moral impulse is the 
seed first planted. It produces only as the origina- 
tor removes obstacles to its growth. In this way 
a great moral establishment is founded, sustaining 
not only the life of its founder, but becoming a 
mighty factor for good in the lives of others. 

The routine of moral duties tends to staleness. 
New enterprises are needed to give zest to one's 
convictions. One may hold certain ideals, theo- 
retically, until it becomes a fixt habit not to put 
them into execution. Continuously running in 
old grooves makes religion conventional and 
formal. The spirit, smothered by words and 
forms, never has a chance to do a bit of spon- 
taneous work. Little wonder that it pines and 
dies for want of exercise. 

The nascent thought is a pioneer across the 
vast area of brain territory. Like the woodman 
of early colonial days, blazing the trees as he 
went through the forests, the new thought goes 
its way, leaving sure marks by which others may 
follow. If it be followed, a highway is estab- 
lished, and other thoughts come gliding smoothly 
into the beaten way; if not, the nascent thought 
wanders and dies alone, and the great forests 
of brain territory remain unexplored. 



THE NASCENT THOUGHT 85 

Two main causes keep the average brain from 
following up the trail of the new thought, viz., 
indolence and fear. Thinking demands a great 
output of energy, and men shrink from it. This 
seems strange, seeing it is such delightful work, 
the most fascinating and remunerative that man 
ever enterprised. But a host of men who are 
not giving out any new thought, place them- 
selves under strong suspicion that pure laziness 
is the preventing cause. This covers one class 
of non-producers. But are men afraid? It ap- 
pears that they are. In all professions there are 
energetic men, those who demonstrate a desire to 
do their best, but who dread to launch out into 
ocean's deep, or to follow a straggling but bold 
thought into the rugged forest. That they are 
afraid is proven by the fact that all of their 
products are mediocre, tame, patterned after the 
work of others. 

Nascent thoughts may be compared to sharp- 
shooters who precede the rank and file of an 
army. Where they pass the main body can 
always go. But if the main body does not sup- 
port these forerunners, they must surely perish. 
And the new thought must be supported at once. 
No parleying, no dallying is safe. The danger of 
being cut off is always imminent. But properly 



86 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

followed up, a glorious conquest must be the re- 
sult. All of the new territory is so much actual 
gain added to the empire of kingly mind. Roads 
are built as the army of the mind advances, sta- 
tions are established, and the royal flag of thought 
is unfurled over them. 

The truth as to the mind's vastness does not 
apply merely to the genius or colossus among his 
fellows; it is of especial encouragement to the 
mediocre man who has always felt keenly his 
limitations. Even he has a brain so vast that he 
can not utilize near all of its possibilities. There 
are new languages for him to learn, new sciences 
to master, world-enterprises to be launched. He 
is a king, every inch of him, if he will but de- 
clare his kingship. His empire must be explored, 
however, before it can be established. But if he 
only presses his discoveries, diamond fields, richer 
than those of Africa are before him ; rose-gardens, 
veritable Edens, lie in his way; nor does any 
flaming sword prevent his entrance Into them. 
The rather has the guardian angel flung aside his 
blade of death that he may entreat with out- 
stretched hands all passing men to pause and 
come within. 



Chapter VIII 

THE VITAL TOUCH 

THE nascent thought logically suggests what 
I shall call the living touch. And it is not 
necessary to go very far to find a wholesome and 
practical illustration out of daily observation as 
to what I mean. For I have had an opportunity 
this very evening to note the renditions of half a 
dozen young women in their graduating exercises 
in music. I observed that one was exceedingly 
accurate as to technique, but too loud and harsh 
in touch; another lacked in technique and me- 
chanical skill, manifesting a certain intractable- 
ness of spirit that was provoking to her masters, 
but pleasing to those that like boldness and in- 
dependence. And yet a third, a timid, frail 
creature, with the usual slender fingers and liquid 
brown eyes, thrilled the audience, not only by her 
perfect skill in execution, but likewise with that 
strange tone-color of genius which she put into 
every note. I saw a lady in front of me, herself 
a musician, turn to her companion, and could but 

^7 



88 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

hear the excited whisper, **She has the living 
touch!" 

Every one knows what that means, realizes 
that there is a difference, and is well aware that 
mere mechanical perfection does not touch the 
world's heart. The musician, like every other 
toiler in the human family, must put herself into 
her song if she expects it to thrill her hearers. 

Apropos of the above, I knew a young minis- 
ter who went to a great master of expression and 
said to him: *'Sir, tell me, I pray, how I may 
speak with ease and effectiveness; for I find my 
throat growing tired, utterly fatigued in the de- 
livery of a discourse. Worse still, my voice splits 
and creaks at times until my hearers seem to feel 
the pain and discomfort of my own suffering. I 
can not *hold' my audience." 

And that master of platform expression 
answered briefly: *Xive your thoughts; speak 
only what you feel. Remember, as you stand 
before men, that you are a Living Voice." 

Now, I consider that the master was uttering 
a true fundamental to a successful performance of 
any task, of any sort whatsoever. For it is not 
the lack of ability that makes so many fail, but 
the rather a lack of interest in what they perfunc- 
torily do. One does not grow weary and bored 



THE VITAL TOUCH 89 

in doing those things that one likes to do. And 
the world ever looks on with interest and delight 
at the doing of them in such a manner. 

'*I have been up a fortnight with my sick 
child," said a father to me. *'I watched all 
through those nights myself, fearing to entrust 
him to another." 

'*You must have become painfully exhausted," 
I replied, sympathetically. 

But his answer, given frankly, genuinely, filled 
me with amaze: **I never thought of myself; it 
was love for my boy, and anxiety for his life, 
that occupied my whole mind." 

If we think of ourselves in a chronic manner, 
it follows of necessity that we shall grow weary. 
The living touch emanates from the life that is 
exuberant and abundant in its consecration to 
duty. I can not explain the depths of mystery 
in the tone-color of the voice, but I recognize it, 
feel it, am moved by it in the singer's words as 
she appears before her audience. Neither can I 
define the tone-color of an act, but I observe it in 
my own work and in that of others. 

This living touch has to do with living things. 
And I fancy that the young woman who had the 
vital touch in the graduating recital somehow 
looked upon the great production which she ren- 



90 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

dered as being a living entity. It was not a mat- 
ter of pressing the piano keys with her fingers in 
a marvelous fashion, but it was the far greater 
fact of meeting a living soul in the person of the 
famous composer of what she played, and that 
soul thrilled her own soul until hers responded 
into a glowing incandescence. And it was the 
light from the inner fires of her being that filled 
the music hall with glory. 

I am sure that the performer in any sphere of 
activity needs to make out of his business some- 
thing that lives by reason of human interest. 
That is, his work should be worthy of human 
interest because it touches the lives of human 
beings. And only as any work is of value to the 
race can there be any wholesome enthusiasm for 
it on the part of the doer. A man isolated for- 
ever from his fellows could not develop a large 
degree of interest in anything. The business 
world may talk in terms of railroads and steam- 
ships and factories until some pessimistic mind 
declares that the whole universe has run to mate- 
rialism, and that the only voice that is heeded 
among men is the voice of the loom and shuttle, 
of wheels and whistles of industry. But, after 
all, it Is the hum of human voices that makes the 
real hum in business: remove that, and the noise 



THE VITAL TOUCH 91 

of machines would die out like the ticking of a 
run-down clock. 

The foregoing is but a declaration that human- 
ity and human industry are essentially identical; 
that work is only an expansion of man's self; that 
toil, in its dignified sense, is but a graphic ex- 
hibition of the heart. For me to separate my- 
self from my task, and to think of it as being a 
distinct entity, Is equivalent to despising the task; 
and that ever means failure in the performing of 
it. If my task is worth doing at all, it is worth 
loving with mind and heart. I am aware that 
this statement will be confronted forthwith by 
the retort that many of the pursuits of life are 
too trivial and common to dignify with one's 
affectionate pride. But just here is where we 
tremble on the brink of a precipice; we are in 
danger of falling into a huge abyss. In which the 
Master of Creation found the great world broken 
when He spoke about the small and common 
things of life. There was the lily, a very com- 
mon flower, which nobody cared for; and He 
said, ^^Behold the lilies . . . Solomon in all his 
glory was not arrayed like one of these." And 
what does He mean ? Certainly so much as this : 
even the tiny things of creation look beautiful to 



92 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

the Creator, who made them In the fulness of per- 
fection. 

And if it be a woman, sweeping the floor of a 
cottage, or a hen, in the shadows of the evening, 
calling her chirruping brood under her wings, 
there is always this meaning to the Master: the 
beauty, the glory, the sweetness of life, of duty. 
It is not what the duties of life are within them- 
selves that make them common and onerous, but 
it is what one fails to put into them out of one's 
heart that leaves them ordinary; and, conversely, 
it is what one actually injects into them that lifts 
the most ordinary of performances into the third 
heaven, and crowns them with glory. 

The tired man from his office goes out upon 
the golf-links and finds exhilaration and recrea- 
tion in the game. Paradoxes logically follow; he 
returns home tired but rested; he has worked 
hard at playing, and now feels like more work. 
That great stove, the body, has burned up waste 
tissue very fast, and so, has built up the body 
with equal rapidity. Lastly, because the tired 
man has beaten his opponents on the links, he has 
laid by surplus force by which to beat his com- 
petitors in the game of business. 

Interest in one's work means far more than 
interest from any financial investment one may 



THE VITAL TOUCH 93 

possibly make. And as interest from an invest- 
ment is continuous, so there should continuously 
leap out of one's work, springing up into one's 
heart, a stream of interest in that task which 
seems to the doer to be a fortune of untold value. 
No man should feel poor who has plenty to do and 
strength with which it may be enthusiastically done. 

Here comes a youth, sauntering down life's 
great highway, and pausing, as he meets a friend, 
he declares with ennui: ''I am only trying to kill 
a bit of time." O, crime of the centuries, sin of 
all sins, murder in the first degree — killing time! 
Kill an animal body and its skeleton remains; kill 
the oak, and its dead trunk still stands; burn 
down a mansion, and ashes are left with which 
the soil may be enriched; but kill Time and it is 
gone for ay, leaving not even a skeleton or trunk 
or fleck of ash. And to think that so precious a 
gift as time should hang with heaviness upon any 
mortal's hands, when it was given of the Creator 
to king and peasant alike as the one priceless 
treasure of the race I 

Just the mere enjoyment of a sane, whole- 
some, clean physical existence is worth cultivating. 
As Browning has so finely exprest it: 

"How good is man's life, the mere living! How fit to employ 
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!" 



94 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

But this exuberance is only basic to that deeper 
joy of the soul, in its living beauty, as it flowers 
out in the field of service. To feel, like the 
Master, that the virtue goes out of oneself, even 
tho the world but touches the hem of one's gar- 
ment; to realize that one's hand can grasp the 
hand of the dead, and quicken the lifeless body 
into activity — that is joy, and that is service. 
And to have such a touch is the privilege of any 
human who is willing to enter the school of life 
with Jesus, the Carpenter, as Teacher. He 
studied life, as the 'Trincipia" of all knowledge, 
and used naught but life-words in his terminology. 
And altho this greatest Teacher died while yet a 
young man, I find myself doubting if He ever 
would have become old in attitude had He lived 
twice or thrice as long. And this is only founda- 
tional to saying that there is a moral oughtness 
resting on us to remain young in spirit, not only 
for our own sakes but for the sake of others. 
For the true life-giver must ever be young. 

Sad to relate, many who are young in years 
are old in attitude. For them there exists no 
wonderland. All of the joyous surprizes of youth 
are gone. Why? Because the real life has oozed 
out of the heart, and wasted itself In the hot 
sands of some desert of ephemeral, sensuous pas- 



THE VITAL TOUCH 95 

sion. Life to them has lost its charm. Once 
the gardens were a-bloom, and the roses had burst 
out in red and white and gold; the violets had 
blossomed by the pathside, and the clematis had 
grown in gorgeous profusion over the figured 
trellises, while lilies of the valley nestled in many 
a sunny nook and smiled always. Youth loved 
these things of beauty and freshness, walked 
among them and carest them with great, won- 
dering eyes of joy. And lo ! the spirit of oldness 
seemed to fall upon the whole garden, while 
every green, blooming plant was nipt and dead- 
ened; and the soul, loitering down the pathways 
of forsaken youth, heard only the rustling of 
dry, lifeless leaves. Where lay the blame? In 
truth, it was the spirit of deadness that fell upon 
the heart, not the flowers; these are amaranthine 
in their freshness. The shame and blame is that 
those who may be young in body should become 
old In affection, old in their eager curiosity to 
know more of the unlimited truth of existence, 
and indifferent as to how abundant is the return 
that they may render out of their hearts to the 
great Giver of all life. We think of Words- 
worth, that greatest of all of the mystic nature- 
poets, in those transcendent lines on the Immor- 
tality of the Soul, wherein he reached the moun- 



96 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

tain-top of inspiration, and saw with a spiritual 
vision that made the conventional life seem empty: 

"There was a time when meadow, grove and stream, 
The earth and every common sight 
To me did seem 
Appareled in celestial light 
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 
It is not now as it hath been of yore ; 
Turn whereso'er I may, 
By night or day 
The things which I have seen I now can see no more." 

Now, wherein lies the sadness of this poet's 
statement? In that he at last has become dis- 
illusioned? Has come into a realization of 
things as they are? Surely not. For we ought 
to desire to know things as they exist, whether 
that knowledge brings pleasure or pain. If we 
are to live on the tinsel and glamor of appear- 
ances, let us die and be over with the farce of 
the present world. But the true ground of the 
lament inheres In the deplorable fact that the 
wTiter had ceased to see the real glory as it once 
imprest itself upon him, and which, to the peren- 
nially youthful mind must ever glow with its 
freshness. No one can exhaust the grandeur of 
a sunrise by enjoying it once, thrice, or a thou- 
sand times; for at the thousandth time it is just 
as full of mystery as it was at first. 



THE VITAL TOUCH 97 

It Is the living touch that gives power to the 
prophet's prayers. Men pray ''Our Father'' 
until the words are repeated by the driest sort of 
rote. Not for much speaking are men heard in 
their supplications, but for the intensity and sin- 
cerity of their utterances. Man would as profit- 
ably set a graphophone going with entreaties to 
God as to speak words with his lips that do not 
arise, quivering with life, out of his soul. 

The life-touch Is merely a term to express 
articulation of my life with that of my neighbor, 
using the term neighbor In a racial sense. I am 
to feel the pain of all wrong in the earth, to ex- 
perience the joy of all joy, to share with my 
brother all poverty and riches. Whatever burden 
I may carry Is for the fraternity, and at the cen- 
ter of the world's work I must bury my heart. 



Chapter IX 

FAITH AND FOUNDATIONS 

AN examination of foundations at this junc- 
xjL ture would seem naturally to articulate 
itself with the preceding chapters and those that 
are to follow. For, altho I may have chosen 
the highest known standard of pitch in conduct, 
whose vibrations a well-nigh infinite mind has 
caught up, sympathetically; and even if, with 
friendly attitude toward the universe that mind 
has attacked its problems with an abiding pas- 
sion, I feel the need in my spirit of having an 
absolute assurance of my undergirdings. And 
what would avail the efforts of a bold, inde- 
pendent mind, quivering with new-born life, if 
that mind must impinge against an immovable 
wall, called death? Or, if it must drop from 
the shores of time down Into an infinite abyss, 
with no hope of a footing throughout eternity? 

I am aware that in previous chapters it has 
been assumed that there does exist a sure footing 
for the immortal estate; but the human soul must 
have more than this assumption; reason chal- 

98 



FAITH AND FOUNDATIONS 99 

lenges all foregoing statements, and asks for 
proof according to its own standards of argument. 
And hence, I purpose to examine with some care 
certain essential elements that are basic to the 
perpetuity of any religion whatsoever. If the 
Christian religion can stand the test, my spirit 
will be satisfied with her outlook into the other 
world. 

First of all, then, whence came our religion? 
How did we receive it? And the answer must 
admit that it is an Inheritance. What we pos- 
sess has been handed down to us in large measure 
from the past. It Is no mere poetical fancy to 
declare myself the heir of all the ages; it Is a 
substantial reality from which I could not escape 
If I would. No nation has ever come Into pos- 
session, first-hand, of government, law or liberty. 
Nor has It created In any age a great literature 
or system of philosophy. It has been able to de- 
velop, add to what It has received, and thereby 
to enter upon some golden age of prosperity or 
Intellectual achievement. But there never was a 
golden age that did not have beneath It the 
sterner Iron age, since Iron Is necessary to beat 
out the gold; and there never was an Iron age 
that did not have beneath It the stone age; for 
the stone age was the age of nature, and during 



lOO THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

that time man was taking a long course of in- 
struction in laying foundations — and nature's dis- 
tinctive foundations are in stone. It is true that 
there are ages in which something absolutely new 
seems to appear in certain branches of learning; 
but sufficient research reveals the fact that the 
veins of truth so appearing are only outcroppings 
of identical veins that run beneath the surface 
of some preceding age of civilization. There are 
at least intimations of every new field of dis- 
covery lying back somewhere in the past. It is 
the order of the universe that there should be 
an absolute unity in all plan and purpose. No 
man lives or dies to himself. When the Creator 
bade the race go forth and conquer the earth He 
instituted a cooperative association that was to 
spread with humanity around the world. The 
scattering of the nations at the Tower of Babel 
was only the setting of tribes to different tasks. 
Through different nationalities the lines of truth 
were to take divergent paths of direction, in 
order to traverse the entire range of human en- 
deavor. These lines were to diverge so widely 
as to swing even into absolutely opposite direc- 
tions to each other; but the order of the universe 
must be preserved, and the divergent lines must 
converge sometimes, somewhere. As sun rays 



FAITH AND FOUNDATIONS loi 

come together through the medium of a converg- 
ing lens, so the nations of the earth are to be 
brought together through the person of the Son 
of Man. That is the claim to be substantiated. 

The law of cumulative inheritances is strik- 
ingly exemplified in the history of religion. Re- 
ligions have risen and fallen, carrying up and 
down with them states and nations. But while 
a religion of a local or national scope has passed, 
religion, as a world-inheritance, has remained. 
Out of the fragments of every crumbled temple 
of religion, the race has picked up a gem of 
truth, a fleck of gold, and has carefully laid it 
away in the treasure-house of the centuries, from 
which is to be constructed the new and universal 
temple of God, *'the house not made with hands," 
but made of the varied elements of all thought 
and effort of human kind. 

The cause of the failure of any religion to 
abide, and to perpetuate the life of its adher- 
ents in a national existence, has arisen from the 
limitations of the truth it contained. Being only 
a partial revelation it of necessity had to fail. 
But while no good thing in religion has ever 
been lost, not all of the untruths of religion 
have passed away. Religion is stronger, more 
of a unit in this day than at any period in 



102 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

the race's history, and yet, there are many 
divergent lines that still refuse to be concentered 
into the One of eternity. The object of world- 
evangelization is to establish fully the law of 
spiritual economics, for God purposes gathering 
up all fragments of human effort and thought 
that ''nothing be lost." 

A distinctive testimony to the value of re- 
ligion as a factor in unifying and developing a 
national life is, that every state has progressed 
hand-in-hand with its religion. When religion 
was strong, virile, vital, so was the state. There 
was never such a wholesome condition of national 
life during the history of the Roman state as in 
those early days when men believed in their gods, 
and in their power to help and bless them in war 
and peace. Then, the cooperation of their gods 
was necessary to success. But when the people 
lost faith in the gods, when they began to look 
upon them as myths and traditions, then it was 
the whole civilization began its decay for final 
passing. The purity of the family life went; 
with the dying of belief in the Penates, or house- 
hold gods, the home began to deteriorate — there 
was no household god to look after it. In the 
days of faith in the Lares, or ancestral spirits, 
the home was pure and the hearthstone protected 



FAITH AND FOUNDATIONS 103 

against invaders. With loss in that belief, how- 
ever, the impurities from the outside crept in to 
vitiate the home purity and to destroy the sanctity 
of the home circle. Tacitus, in his ''Germania," 
even before the empire had reached its greatest 
territorial extent, warns his countrymen against 
immorality, and the decadence of the sanctity of 
the family. He shows, by comparison, that the 
barbarous Germans are better, morally, than the 
cultured Romans. And all of this retrogression 
had been from what was originally a lofty 
plane of virtue, co-temporal with faith in re- 
ligion. The time finally came when Roman writers, 
with barbed words, satirized the faith of the 
fathers. 

A glance at more modern times only sub- 
stantiates the argument that the integrity of a 
state Is Indissolubly linked with that of Its pre- 
vailing religion. The middle of the eighteenth 
century found England In a most degraded con- 
dition, morally and politically. The Wesleyan 
revival, bringing to the masses a new faith In 
God, did much to save not only the Church, but 
the State as well. 

But faith In God Implies faith In the super- 
natural and, therefore, In the supra-rational. 
Rome's loss of faith In religion meant that, to 



I04 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

the learned and cultivated, religion had sunk into 
a superstition bereft of every trace of the super- 
natural. And such an attitude could mean noth- 
ing less than a bald infidelity. 

At a much later period in history, during the 
French Revolution, a complete repudiation of all 
that was supra-rational, could only mean a re- 
pudiation of all belief in God. And so, the '*Age 
of Reason" had its birth. No mention of Deity 
was permitted in governmental documents. Rea- 
son, represented by a gaudily adorned female 
figure, was crowned an'd worshiped in the Notre 
Dame Cathedral. And France has not recovered 
from this shameless blasphemy to the Almighty 
to this day. 

However, the passing Roman religion left a 
sacred deposit of faith in the Infinite, the super- 
natural. Religion, in form, had died, only to 
give place to a more vigorous and abiding type 
in the form of Christianity. True, the Chris- 
tian faith had to find its first adherents among 
the poor and ignorant, since the educated class 
could not accept the belief in the resurrection of 
a crucified Redeemer. But this very fact — this 
supra-rational fact — which the Greeks laughed at 
when Paul preached at Athens, was the very 
element that appealed to the masses who had lost 



FAITH AND FOUNDATIONS 105 

their gods. It was a joy to them to accept and 
honor a divine Christ. 

What was true of the Roman religion in a 
limited sense, was true of the Jewish in a much 
larger degree. Jesus had declared that He had 
not come to destroy the religion, which He loved, 
but the rather to supplement and establish it. 
He, too, had to depend upon the ignorant and 
poor to accept His teaching; scribe and Pharisee 
were too humanly wise to adopt them. 

But this utter dependence of religion upon the 
credence of the unlearned was in itself a strong 
credential to its supernatural element. They 
could not reason it all out, but to them that was 
a small thing, inasmuch as they were not by train- 
ing sticklers for reason; it was enough that the 
new evangel appealed to their hearts, brought 
hope to their despairing souls. That was evi- 
dence enough to them that God was speaking. 

On no other basis than that of the super- 
natural origin can one satisfactorily account for 
religion. To call it a human discovery, based on 
cunningly devised fables, foisted by priests upon 
the people in order to control them, is not to 
appeal to reason and the facts. Declaring it a 
sort of ''pathological madness" does not satisfy 
the integrity of the intellect. Nor does the claim 



io6 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

of George Eliot, that Christianity is merely a 
finely wrought-out system of utility, which the 
race has developed by experience, meet the de- 
mands of explanation. The fear of the elements, 
existing in the mind of primeval man, undoubt- 
edly accounts for much of the religious emotion 
and many crude notions that prevailed among 
early nations and tribes. But this cold basis of 
reason as laid down in the theories of modern 
nationalists fails, since, logically, the foundation of 
fear would of necessity be destructive. Only love, 
and faith in a God of love, could produce the 
great constructive philosophy of Christianity. 
God, speaking to the heart of man, must have 
been the ultimate source of our religion. Noth- 
ing short of a divine origin, comparable to an 
ocean tide sweeping out across the plains of time, 
satisfies the mind as an efficient cause. Saint 
John speaks of a river of water, clear as crystal, 
proceeding "out of the throne of God and of the 
Lamb.'' That is religion of the abiding type. 
And when that tide touched this world in the dim 
dawn of creation, It was destined to flow on to 
the end of time. If the banks of the river in 
John's vision were lined with trees, bearing 
fruits, with leaves for the healing of the nations, 
the sacred trees and fruits and leaves have still 



FAITH AND FOUNDATIONS 107 

remained as God's gift to men. And humanity 
has been fed out of this heavenly forest, has 
slaked its thirst from the crystal stream, too long 
to quit them. The trees are where the Creator 
planted them; man could not do it, tho he found 
them, and finding, has eaten and will ever eat 
of the fruits of his salvation. 

The supernatural element in religion has pre- 
served it from destruction, and this is pre- 
eminently true of the Christian faith. From the 
very birth of Christ to the present day every 
effort that an evil mind could conceive of has 
been instituted to destroy His religion. Herod 
endeavored to kill Him as a child, but failed. 
Later, the Jews did kill Him, only to enthrone 
Him forever in the hearts of the people. Then, 
as the Gospel spread, there arose a series of per- 
secutions by the Roman state such as no religion 
except a God-nourished one could endure. The 
persecutions which the Jews instituted after the 
death of Jesus were eclipsed by those of the 
Roman emperor, Nero. The historian, Tacitus, 
tells of the rage that burned against the Chris- 
tians. Followers of Christ were accused of hav- 
ing burned Rome, the evidence being that Nero 
himself had done it for amusement. Seeking to 
divert suspicion from himself, he began a series 



io8 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

of persecutions, the contemplation of which chills 
the heart to this day. The believers were cruci- 
fied, sewn up in skins of wild beasts and exposed 
to the fury of dogs, and yet others covered with 
combustible materials and used as torches to 
light up the gardens of Nero. Under Domitian 
the persecutions raged with redoubled fury, while 
at the opening of the second century, with the re- 
putedly humane Trajan on the throne, a fresh 
onslaught was made upon the disciples of the 
Nazarene. Pliny, proconsul of far-off Bithynia, 
writes Trajan about these Christians, stating that 
the only fault he could find in them was that 
they were accustomed to meet before sunrise and 
sing hymns of praise to Jesus as Deity! He 
stated further that they then bound themselves 
under solemn oath to commit no wickedness — 
neither theft, nor robbery, nor adultery — and 
never to break a promise. And they concluded 
their simple worship by taking the Sacrament of 
their Lord's last Supper on earth 

Pliny proceeds to describe his method of deal- 
ing with this strange sect. He demands that all 
such believers shall repeat formulas of petitions 
to the Roman gods, and to offer supplications, 
with wine and frankincense, to the emperor's 
image. If they did this blasphemy, they were 



FAITH AND FOUNDATIONS 109 

released; if not, executed. In reply to the pro- 
consul's Inquiry as to whether his method of 
treatment were acceptable to the emperor, that 
benign ruler speaks commendingly of his loyal 
servant's mild measures! 

We arc left to infer from the historic facts in 
the case that the gravamen of offense on the 
part of these disciples of Jesus was that they be- 
lieved in the divinity of their Lord, who had 
risen from the dead, thus transcending all known 
natural law. Strange as it may appear, the well- 
meaning Marcus Aurelius, emperor in the latter 
part of the second century, was relentless in his 
hatred against Christians, many of whom per- 
ished at his behest. Passing over other reigns, 
extending through another century, we pause a 
moment to note the terrible persecutions under 
Diocletian toward the close of the third century 
of the Christian era. Never had blood of 
martyrs Hown so freely, the object of the state 
being utterly to extirpate the new religion for- 
ever. The fury of the empire was carried to its 
highest pitch of maddened frenzy because the 
humble believers in the Nazarenc attributed to 
Him, as a risen Redeemer, powers that eclipsed 
those which the vain rulers would arrogate to 
themselves. It was the supremacy of Jesus that 



no THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

offended them, just as it is His transcendent 
claim to divinity that offends the pride of my 
lord Man to-day. 

To my mind nothing but the supernatural cle- 
ment in religion as taught by the Son of Man 
could survive the machinations of evil that were 
set for its destruction. 

The supernatural element in Christianity can 
not be rationalized without destroying the re- 
ligion itself in its true nature. That is, religion 
is dependent upon its supernatural element for its 
efficiency and perpetuity to the race, and the 
moment one has rationalized it, one finds it has 
melted away like the mists, in that its essential 
quality is discarded. Wherever reason has dis- 
sected and analyzed to a point of satisfactory ex- 
planation, religion takes leave as having no fur- 
ther mission to perform for man. Who cares for 
a religion that can not extend beyond the finite 
bounds of the human mind? The supra-rational 
in religion is precisely what has ever been at- 
tractive to the race. Efforts have not been want- 
ing in any age to effect a rationalization of re- 
ligious belief, altho rationalism, from the scien- 
tific standpoint is considered to have begun with 
Descartes. But the efforts of the Gnostics in the 
early days of the Church marked the utilization 



FAITH AND FOUNDATIONS 1 1 1 

of the same ideas that arose about the middle of 
the eighteenth century, and in modern times have 
become well developed in certain phases of 
criticism. Neoplatonism, which began to flourish 
in the third century, represented a profound 
effort to rationalize the whole system of Chris- 
tianity. Origen, the learned Alexandrian scholar 
and presbyter, was an apostle of this philosophy, 
which, in its final outcome, opened the way for 
Arianism, denying to Christ His divinity. The 
doctrines of Socinus, the Italian theologian, who 
lived in the sixteenth century, denied the essential 
unity of the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, and 
the atonement. These, and other teachings like 
them, mark out the path for all modern rational- 
ism. The arguments of these Christian rational- 
izers sound strikingly like thos" of every modern 
rationalizer who, leaping up in ecstacy over his 
discoveries has cried, ^'Eureka!" 

Now, why did the early Church reject these 
men and their philosophy? Essentially because 
to accept them would have meant death to the 
Church in its fundamental principles, connoting, 
as they do, supernatural sources. 

This brings us to consider the paradox, namely, 
the reasonableness of a supra-rational religion. 
Of all religions, the Christian appeals to us as 



112 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

being the most wholesome for mind and body. 
But the human mind instinctively refuses to ac- 
cept that which is irrational. No man can accept 
the non-rational and maintain his mental integrity 
and self-respect. The thinker naturally asks, Do 
you expect me to embrace a religion which, by its 
nature, is unreasonable? The answer must be an 
emphatic negative. God does not command the 
mind to stultify itself. 

Let us hasten, however, to note that there is 
a vast difference between an irrational system of 
religion, and a religion which, in its ultimate 
reaches, is supra-rational. The Apostle Paul ad- 
mirably expresses the intellectual basis of Chris- 
tianity when he speaks of ''the acknowledgment 
of the mystery of God, and the Father, and of 
Christ, in which {i.e., in which acknowledg- 
ment) are hid all the treasures of wisdom and 
knowledge." (Col. 2:2-3.) That Is, in the 
acceptance of the Gospel, the human mind acts 
in perfect accord with the laws of reason, in that 
It finds in this Gospel a philosophy of human life 
in its relation to the universe that is eminently 
satisfactory. In its comprehensible elements, the 
Gospel in an admirable manner satisfies both 
mind and heart, bringing peace to the soul. As 
to those higher mysteries, God and eternity, the 



FAITH AND FOUNDATIONS 113 

heart can entrust itself to an Almighty One who 
is at the center of the universe, and who in Him- 
self is a sufficient explanation of the unknowable. 
With perfect consistency the human mind can 
leave to God the solution of the insoluble; and 
any man is justifiable in flinging the burden of 
mystery upon a Creator who has redeemed him, 
and lifted him into a state of perfect peace, and 
of harmony with the world in which he finds 
himself. 

The ancient Greeks believed that the gods 
lived on Mt. Olympus, and in that region held 
their councils relating to the destinies of men. 
Now, altho the Greeks could not scale Olympus, 
nor know the mysteries of those gods, they could 
explore the base of the mountain, be satisfied that 
its base was a part of the earth, and remain con- 
tent to reap and sow their grain on the surround- 
ing plains. So that the tangible and knowable 
was In some permanent and utilizable way linked 
with the intangible and unknowable. In like man- 
ner, the Christian trusts the God who is at the 
top of the mountain. There are, indeed, mys- 
teries in the lofty, divine altitudes that he can not 
solve, but that limitation in no sense negates to 
his mind the realities of the mountain's base. 
Our Master Himself *Vent up Into a mountain" 



114 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

and was transfigured there, in the presence of 
Moses and Elijah. His face was radiant as the 
sun and His garments white as the light. The 
disciples could not stand the vision, but falling 
down hid their faces from the sight of that awful 
mystery. They could not look upon Him there; 
but when they came down from the mount they 
could. For there, in the plain, the nimbus of 
ineffable glory was vanished, and the supernal 
whiteness and luster that had fallen from His 
poor, seamless garb, left Him quite the picture of 
the dust-covered pilgrim. Yet, He was the same 
Lord, who had been transfigured; only, a part of 
His glory had been left up in the mountain of 
mysteries. 

"There are depths of love that I can not know 

Till I cross the narrow sea, 
There are heights of joy that I may not reach 

Till I rest in peace with Thee." 

It is quite in keeping with this view of the 
reasonableness of the Christian faith to note the 
views of Descartes himself, the accredited founder 
of modern rationalism. He went back of all ac- 
cepted truth and philosophy until he reached a 
good, clean spot upon which to stand, and where, 
in open-mindedness, he might receive what of 



FAITH AND FOUNDATIONS 115 

truth came to him. Sifting out all known truth 
and empiracle knowledge as being possibly faulty, 
he laid down his familiar, '*Cogito, ergo sum." 
Accepting this, I therefore become certain of one 
entity, namely, myself. But what of God? How 
does an imperfect being come into the knowledge 
of an infinitely perfect Being? Only in this way: 
the idea of God must be innate, placed in the 
mind by that perfect Being Himself, and so, 
present because of the principle of construction of 
the human mind. The principle of rationalism is 
that the truth of a proposition must be tested by 
its clear and distinct intelligibility; but inasmuch 
as Descartes himself postulated God as a clear 
induction according to the structure of the mind, 
so is the principle for which I contend clearly 
established, namely, the rationality of a supra- 
rational religion. Its foundations are capable of 
being scrutinized; one may look them over, inves- 
tigate, analyze them. There is nothing in the 
basic principles of Christianity that offends 
normal reason. God is a reasonable postulate; 
and with this postulate, we may easily conclude 
that It was a logical act on the part of the Father 
of men to come into the world in the form of a 
Son, both divine and human, in order that He 
might speak face to face with His brothers, and 



ii6 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

tell them that the Father wanted them to come 
home. 

But some one objects, You are violating your 
own premise, namely, that rationalization de- 
stroys religion. In reply, I make no denial that 
I am rationalizing, but I do it only to Indicate 
the limitations of human reason, and to assert 
that the Gospel of Christ is the one power suffi- 
cient to redeem the soul. Moreover, the human 
mind, accepting the fundamental base of Chris- 
tianity as rational, can, with consistency, commit 
itself to It as being a system which may be safely 
trusted, even when the light of reason fades out 
among the approaching shadows of death. 

I have no hesitancy in declaring that the high- 
est joy attainable Is that which is found along the 
path of thought. Intellectual happiness Is the 
purest and sweetest that can come to man. 
Physical sensations of taste and touch pass and 
become but a memory, having little pleasure In 
them. But the fruits of the joy of thinking abide. 
One can not forget them. The happiness of the 
traveler on the road of reason is sure as long as 
he keeps journeying. But just here I would say 
lies the need of the supra-rational element In 
man's religion, since the believer comes to a point 
In the road of reason beyond which he can not 



FAITH AND FOUNDATIONS 117 

proceed. It is then that there comes to his aid 
that 

"Strong Son of God, immortal Love 
Whom we that have not seen Thy face, 
By faith, and faith alone embrace, 
Believing where we can not prove." 

He takes man by the hand and leads him on. 

Every student has had a taste of that feeling 
of helplessness that surely comes to the intellectual 
worker. I recall most distinctly my own sense of 
disappointment as a young student of an "Intro- 
duction to Philosophy." I found the introduc- 
tion so full of charm and promise that I could 
scarcely wait; I was tempted to run ahead and 
meet Philosophy before the author had brought 
me face to face with her. It seemed to me that 
if the introduction were so promising, Philosophy 
herself would prove a panacea for all mental 
aches and pains. And yet when I had met her, 
I found that she was the rather a sphinx, pro- 
posing, indeed, riddles of the universe, but leav- 
ing me to work out their meaning as best I could. 
And withal, I found that there comes no explana- 
tion of the universe, this side of faith in a per- 
sonal God, that is at all satisfactory. The human 
mind at last reaches the topmost pinnacle of the 
mountain. It Is snow-capped, glistering In its 



ii8 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

pure whiteness. But unless one has the com- 
panionship of the Unseen Personality, one must 
perish alone. How gladdening to the reason in 
these chilling regions, apart from **thc maddening 
crowd," to find One clad in the transfigured gar- 
ments of long ago, grasping tenderly the appeal- 
ing hand, and saying, *Xet not your heart be 
troubled: ye believe in God; believe also in Me." 
But If the Christ bids the believer follow Him, 
how shall he do it? By standing upon the spring- 
board of faith and leaping from that topmost 
crag of reason out into the sphere of spirit. 
There he finds himself outside the reach of 
earthly forces of gravitation, under the sway of 
law that reigns in the Universe of Spirit. And 
tending Godward, he lays his weary head upon 
the bosom of the Infinite, there to find eternal 
peace. It must all become clear then to the stu- 
dent; for the faith of man has become the reason 
of God ; the supernatural In his religion has 
proven Itself to be the reasoning of the Almighty. 
Such a state must be as intensely real to con- 
sciousness as ourselves. Instead of the super- 
natural becoming the offshoot of reason, we shall 
find that human rationalism Is only a single ray 
of light that has fallen from the Sun of Right- 
eousness upon the earth. 



FAITH AND FOUNDATIONS 119 

The attacks that have been made upon re- 
ligion are, in their last analysis, the efforts of 
rationalism to discredit the supra-rational. One 
man, like Huxley, may question the integrity of 
the Sacred Writings on the basis of the inac- 
curacies of the old Usher chronology, while 
another may make his attack upon the foundation 
cf inconsistency in the statement of fact. The 
cruelties practised upon the Canaanites at the be- 
hest of Jehovah offer a reasonable cause for re- 
jection of the divine scheme of leadership for a 
different type of mind. These objections, along 
with many others, are examples of mere logical 
accidents. The largest contingent of doubters, 
however, are rejecting the Scriptures on the 
ground of questionable authenticity. I have no 
desire at this point to inject any condemnation of 
reverent students who are endeavoring to get the 
most intelligent information possible as to the 
authorship of the books of the Bible. All of 
their efforts do a negligible amount of harm until 
they begin to question the personality of God, 
and His ability to speak to men. Since God 
speaks to men through men, it would be very 
natural for transcribers to make mistakes of 
minor importance; but through all of the Sacred 
Writings, the golden chain of truth runs, by 



I20 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

every logical test, and that truth is the expression 
of God to the race. And so, I repeat, all de- 
structive criticism of the Bible and Christianity 
to-day springs from an abhorrence of God as a 
Person. Men may make attack upon the authen- 
ticity of certain biblical books, and I see no 
harm that may accrue eventually. But to ques- 
tion the authority of these books is a far different 
thing, involving a discrediting of internal evi- 
dence that is totally subversive of truth. That 
many errors have occurred in the many transla- 
tions of the Scriptures no fair-minded student can 
reasonably doubt; but that the living chain that 
runs through them does not bind the world 
to a personal Creator is not apparent to the 
race, searching with open-mindedness for a sane 
philosophy of existence. Rationalism, as says 
Pfleiderer, does not object to the term personal, 
provided the rationalizer is permitted to define 
personality according to his own glossary. But 
the human heart replies: '*I need no new defini- 
tion of God, any more than I need to have the 
term father re-defined. I want a God who loves 
me, pities me, and who can help me when I come 
to Him in trouble." 

Some day the supernatural will fade away and 
assume the familiar mien of the natural. There 



FAITH AND FOUNDATIONS 121 

IS no conflict in essence between nature and spirit; 
can be none. Only questions of human limitations 
are involved in the reconciliation between the two 
apparent contradictories. As already stated, the 
faith of man is but the reason of God at work 
through all the ages, for man and by man, lift- 
ing him more completely into the sway of spiritual 
forces. The final objective of faith is to inter- 
pret God through man, in terms of time and 
space, with a large margin of allowance for the 
border lines of infinity. This faith is, therefore, 
other-worldly in its nature above everything else 
ever conceived in human philosophy. 

Looking down into the heart of humanity, and 
turning through the pages of God's revelation to 
men, we are imprest with two truths: man is 
unable to pull himself out of the slough of sin, 
and therefore, there must be some external force 
of infinite power to accomplish his salvation. 
And so radical must be man's change of nature 
that the process of his redemption is to involve 
an entirely new scheme in the history of God and 
His universe. At the center of this scheme stands 
the Cross, and this Cross represents the high- 
water mark of God's effort to complete man's 
creation; and it likewise represents the chief 
point of the revulsion of reason, as such, on the 



122 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

part of man. Since this Cross stands at the center 
of the mystery of all mysteries, we need not be 
amazed that the mind drew back from it. Saint 
Paul thinks of humanity as being dead in tres- 
passes and sins (Col. 2:13-14). Christ for- 
gives man's sin, quickens him into new life, and 
taking **the bond written in ordinances," nails it 
to the Cross, where it remains forever inoperative 
and annulled. Here, then, is mystery for us: a 
dead man, living a new life, with his sins in 
reality nailed to a Cross. The old order has 
passed. Jew and Greek have sinned, and in their 
sin they have conceived that no power can re- 
deem a man out of his condition. And the wis- 
dom of the ages rebels against the new scheme; 
there can be nothing to it. But those who are 
willing to hear, to listen, to see — to come and 
try its efficacy, find that the Cross becomes both 
power and wisdom. 

According to the doctrines of Christ Himself, 
the redeemed man must begin at the bottom and 
work toward the top. That same minority of 
the race, which Matthew Arnold has said is the 
salvation of all governments, has ever been the 
saving instrumentality to religion. Only the few 
have accepted heartily the supernatural truth, 
making it a part of the fiber of their being. 



FAITH AND FOUNDATIONS 123 

And IS it strange that the mighty in all ages have 
been unwilling to become as children in order to 
enter the Kingdom? It is a hard thing to re- 
pudiate all of one's foundations, and to begin 
over from the ground. And yet, the method is 
rational, at its core; for we *'are children crying 
in the night"; man does need a Redeemer, must 
have one. And if man is willing to stoop low 
enough to reach childhood, the Redeemer is 
ready to lift him into a high and universal man- 
hood, whose stature is measured in terms of 
Himself. 

Much rationalizing has been done concerning 
the Cross, and much more will follow in the 
course of history. We may say with truth that 
the Cross of Jesus was the inevitable result of a 
clash of sin with goodness; we may think of it 
as a great, spectacular representation of the love 
of God, appealing to men — and it was all of 
that; nothing in history is at all comparable to 
it. And human reason goes further and declares 
that of all the crosses of history — and there have 
been thousands — there was none like His. Those 
other crosses — what of them? Good men and 
bad had died on them, crosses just as rugged and 
painful as His. And after Him, countless num- 
bers of His countrymen died on crosses, writhing 



124 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

in death-agony, on hilltops, in public places, by 
the roadways. But these are all forgotten, un- 
known in history now as distinct figures. But 
His Cross stands out alone, ^'towering o'er the 
wrecks of time," seen of all the world. No 
civilized race on the globe that has not heard of 
that Cross; every detail connected with it is 
known; even the two thieves who died on crosses 
by Him are lifted into immortality because of 
that fact. For no artist could spread on canvas 
the Calvary scene without these other crosses, 
too, with their thieves upon them. 

But rationalize all one may, there is a dizzy 
height to which one at last attains beyond which 
reason can not go, standing, as it does, in the 
presence of the Atonement, the vicarious suffer- 
ings of this High Priest of man, whose only 
sacrifice Is that of His own body, meeting the 
needs of man's soul for all time. Then, like 
Thomas, the first Christian rationalizer, the finite 
reasoner lifts his voice and exclaims, "My Lord 
and my God!" And having proclaimed Him 
Lord, in recognition of His redeemership, a mar- 
velous thing takes place without the aid of 
syllogism or logic: the reasoner finds that the 
Cross has become to him the power of God and 
His wisdom. That is, after an individual has 



FAITH AND FOUNDATIONS 125 

bowed in submission before the Cross, he realizes 
that it has become the storm-center of human life 
by reason of the Christ who chose to die upon 
it. For the power of it is shown in that it lifts 
the individual out of the clutch of sin to a life of 
right living; the wisdom of it is declared in that 
it saves the fragments of a broken soul from de- 
struction; and henceforth the redeemed slave be- 
comes a mighty champion of the new evangel 
against all forces of evil. 

The trend of thought in modern philosophy is 
that we can not go back of man's experience. 
The new pragmatism brushes aside the merely 
theoretical and gives place to practical results. A 
religion that is able to make bad men good, and 
good men better, must be the best religion. 

I have likened the religion of Jesus to a stream 
of water, proceeding out from the throne of God 
and of the Lamb. It is flowing on, and must 
continue to flow. Men have tried to stop its 
current, but without avail. They may cause some 
disturbance in the waters, but it is the power of 
the waters that causes the ripple. 

A large boulder lay in the bottom of the river 
which I knew in my boyhood. We called it the 
''big rock." And as it lifted its head, grim and 
dark, it created no small disturbance in the 



126 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

stream; but the river flowed on, not by reason of 
the power of the rock, but because the power 
was In the waters themselves. Objectors, like- 
wise, to the supernatural Christ may seem to 
create some disturbance in the stream of Life; 
but the power lies in the Living Christ, not in 
themselves. 

This same river would swell with rains and 
become a mighty flood, on whose bosom were 
borne logs and limbs and much debris, creating 
no small interest as they bounded along, seem- 
ingly a part of the waters. But they were not a 
part; somewhere the driftwood was flung out on 
a lonely shore and left to rot. 

These illustrations are analogues of two classes 
of non-believers that are most prevalent: those 
who are positive objectors and try to stop the 
flow of the current; and the thoughtless, uncon- 
cerned, who follow in the stream of Christian 
civilization, who enjoy the benefits of religion, 
but are not in reality a part of the great move- 
ment. Flotsam and jetsam, the idle, thoughtless, 
and rationalistic — floating on the top like drift- 
wood, or lying at the bottom like the rock, but 
never, in any sense, a part of the living stream. 

To identify oneself with the living stream of 
water is to connect oneself with the universe. 



FAITH AND FOUNDATIONS 127 

For if I dip my hand in the spring from yonder 
hillside, I touch all oceans of the earth. If one 
drop of water were let fall into that streamlet, 
it would become a part of the whole system of 
seas and oceans. And if I become a living part 
of that stream proceeding out from the throne 
of God It will finally bear me back in its eternal 
circle to the place where it originated. I become 
an interpreter of the universe in terms of Christ. 
And looking joyously toward the final terminal, 
I may well say: 

"Sunset and evening star, 
And one clear call for me! 
And may there be no moaning of the bar 
When I put out to sea; 
But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 
Too full for sound and foam, 

When that which drew from out the boundless deep 
Turns again home." 



Chapter X 
THE LIFE MORE ABUNDANT 

IF the statements of the preceding chapter are 
acceptable to reason, and if, therefore, we see 
fit to receive them as foundational for a philoso- 
phy of human existence, we must be tremendously 
imprest with the vastness of the field of endeavor 
that lies before us. For in their essential nature 
those statements have had to do with life as a 
force whose proper direction aims at an ultimate 
exploitation of all of the resources of the uni- 
verse. Our chief purpose, then, should be the 
absorption and understanding of this principle. 
The task is most diflficult. 

*^If life had described a single course, like that 
of a solid ball shot from a cannon, we should 
soon have been able to determine its direction," 
says Bergson (Creative Evolution, Chap. II). 
''But it proceeds rather like a shell," he con- 
tinues, ' 'which suddenly bursts into fragments, 
which fragments, being themselves shells, burst 
in their turn into fragments destined to burst 

128 



THE LIFE MORE ABUNDANT 129 

again, and so on for a time incommensurably 
long." 

That IS, life, in its unfoldment, ever meets with 
resistance in the world of inert matter, and must 
struggle through it for a complete expression of 
itself. How long such a scheme of dualism must 
exist none can venture to assert, but the truth 
gleaned from such a philosophy is at least so 
much as this: life can not be imprisoned in- 
definitely by matter; for tho it be represt on the 
one side, it will break for freedom on another. 
It is as tho life had shackles upon her ankles, 
continuously retarding her progress toward the 
Infinite; but the Spirit of Life moves on, drag- 
ging the resisting ball and chain after her, much 
as the prisoner, pulling his heavy weights of 
clanging iron, moves forward despite the pain 
and anguish that he feels. And may I continue 
a step further in figure? Just as the bold con- 
vict now and again makes a dash for liberty, 
despite his heavy ball and chain, and the whizzing 
bullets of captors, and leaps, by half a miracle, 
into freedom, so does the Spirit of Life break 
from her bondage into the untrammeled sphere 
of a more abundant growth and expansion. 

And I am not to complain of my captivity; 
since it exists, since it is a reality, I should take 



I30 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

it as being the best channel through which I may 
come into the great new world that beckons me. 
Indeed, as I have said before, it is needful for 
me to cultivate even the friendly attitude toward 
resisting matter, and wring from it every secret 
that can be obtained, thus building up a new 
basis of eternal living. 

But I am to keep distinctions in mind If I 
would not be ensnared. Matter helps to de- 
velop life, but It Is not life; never can be. And 
so, my real self never Is Identical with what sur- 
rounds me; I am ever a living and distinct entity. 
My existence must ever be spiritual. The con- 
tent of spirit must of necessity compose the sum 
of life's values. Outside of It there can be no 
high joy or deep sorrow, since within Its 
boundaries alone may be found the objects and 
terms of interpretation possessing In any sense 
the nature of the final and absolute. 

Joy that clusters around perishable goods can 
not be very deep, for the joy passes with the 
goods, or before they pass. Material objectives 
are painfully elusive, continuously changing shape 
and contour, even down through their molecular 
structures. The conclusion Is Inevitable: when 
the basis of joy disintegrates, the superstructure 
must take a hopeless fall. 



THE LIFE MORE ABUNDANT 131 

Sorrow and disappointment, like joy, have 
their places in the soul realm. If trouble passes 
with the passing of material objects the thought 
would not be abhorrent. But the sad fact con- 
fronts us, that when physical shapes have changed 
and molecular bases have been broken up, these 
false gods fling back into the spiritual realm that 
which they can not support, and the mind, if un- 
acquainted with any joy except that which clings 
to outward form, has no possession at all but the 
emptiness of sorrow and regret. 

We all want joy — a statement fundamental to 
racial life. We must consider any man insincere 
who claims to have no desire for happiness. It 
must ever be the final goal of the heart. How 
obtain it? Where is it to be found? 

The Son of Man makes this far-reaching 
claim: *'I am come that ye might have life, and 
that ye might have it more abundantly." It is 
the abundant life that brings the real joy. Every 
one has, inherently, some traces of life, some rays 
of light emanating from the soul, but the source 
of the life and light in the superlative degree is 
God, consciously dwelling within. 

Wherein consists the more abundant life, then? 
In disenthrallment, liberation, freedom. The 
most abhorrent bondage is that of mind. The 



132 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

war against human slavery has been so long and 
so persistent that it has finally disappeared from 
all civilized races. But the war against the 
bondage of the soul was declared afresh with the 
advent of the Man of Nazareth, who declared 
that he came to bring life in the place of death. 
His way of securing freedom to the soul was to 
open her doors to the larger realms of life. 

I saw an orange plant growing in a jar. By 
and by the leaves began to turn to a sickly yellow, 
and it looked as if death to the little tree was 
imminent. The owner tapped the enclosing jar, 
whose restraining walls now fell away, displaying 
an intricate mass of roots that had been inter- 
cepted in their growth. The liberated prisoner 
was transplanted to the open ground where It 
might enjoy unrestrained freedom. It was only 
a few days until the change was evident; the 
myriad roots, drawing into their hungry mouths 
nourishment from the surrounding moist ground, 
sent up messages of hope and strength to the 
fading leaves, which began to throw aside their 
pallor of death for the rich, dark hue of living 
green. The abundant life had come by the break- 
ing of prison barriers. It is surely the restraining 
walls built around human souls that the Master 
would break. For life is not to be considered as 



THE LIFE MORE ABUNDANT 133 

a sudden acquirement, as one would find a nugget 
of gold and become, in a twinkling, opulent. One 
may not leap from the deserts of death into some 
paradise of life with a single bound. The 
products of noble living come naturally, by 
gradual stages of development, enriching the re- 
ceiver by daily increment. 

Humanity suffers from surfeit, ennuty but this 
resultant does not obtain by reason of the quan- 
tity but rather of the quality of food forced upon 
the soul. If a man partakes of certain kinds of 
food he experiences an impoverishment, rather 
than an enrichment of blood. Some foods, of a 
frothy nature, have scant nourishment, while 
others, like bad mushrooms, vitiate and poison. 
The strength of a soul, taught by the Master of 
Life, lies in its discriminative power. There is 
about us continuously enough of poison to kill, 
if we only feed upon it. But there is enough of 
pure food to sustain and develop life if we but 
find and partake of it. 

I see a water-lily lying yonder on the bosom of 
the lake. Its white petals are pure and clean, and 
yet, far down beneath, the lily's roots are grow- 
ing in muck and ooze, foul and poisonous. But 
every mouth of the rootlets is wise: feeds only 
on compounds that will make the leaves above 



"• — >^— . 



134 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

beautifully green, and the flower snowy white. 
Wonderful lily! Yet, not nearly so wonderful 
as I may be, if I but will, in discriminating be- 
tween the pure and the impure elements of the 
world in which I live. 

To continue the analogy of feeding and 
growth, one can but grant that the well-developed 
life is dependent upon a systematic method of 
securing nourishment and gaining strength. One 
of the many causes of failure lies in the use of 
spasmodic effort. The soul needs its breakfast 
as well as the body. A certain amount of stimu- 
lation and food is needed each day in order that 
the soul may have a healthy growth. I often 
reflect upon the wisdom of that prayer of the 
Psalmist when he entreated, *'Cause me to hear 
thy loving kindness in the morning." If, when I 
awake, I can but translate the tramp of feet by 
my window, the chirp of bird in my big oak, the 
blast of the whistle from yonder factory, into 
the kindness of God, I have started well. Most 
likely I shall be able to transmute the jargon of 
the whole day into something gentler and kinder 
than the old hypersensitive nerves have been 
wont to allow in the past. The soul has gotten 
a good start, a correct setting in the beginning, so 
that all through the day it can draw its life from 



THE LIFE MORE ABUNDANT 135 

the elements in which it moves and lives. It 
goes *^from strength to strength" in the day's 
tasks, grappling with the forces that oppose, just 
as the body meets the forces of the material 
world. 

Life-fields lie about us, stretching in every 
direction toward the infinite. We are explorers 
in the vast fields, and our work is to advance as 
far as we may in search of new oceans and rivers 
and continents, laying claim to all we find as 
ours. It takes heroism to advance into the fields 
of life. I have seen the man who had been to 
Alaskan gold-fields. There he fought the ele- 
ments, endured the hardships of the rigorous 
clime, searched for flecks of gold along the frozen 
streams, and came back, perhaps, with a neat bag 
of the precious metal. A certain amount of 
glamor surrounds this returned adventurer; for 
apart from the fact that he has gained wealth, he 
has suffered, displayed fortitude. Yet, I can not 
permit this conqueror of Alaska to be compared 
in heroism to the youth who sets out for rich 
gold-fields of the soul. He has heartaches, too; 
suffers the hardships of the explorer, the gloom of 
icy loneliness, the pain of toilsome search ; but his 
wealth is beyond computation. Not only is he 
the world's grandest hero, but he is the possessor 



136 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

of the world's greatest riches. *'A man's life con- 
sisteth not in the abundance of the things he 
possesseth." Why? Because the *^things" are 
perishable; they vanish like the opalescent soap- 
bubbles which children blow from pipes. They 
are pretty enough while they last, but they are 
gone so soon. 

In that pathetic story that Guy de Maupassant 
tells of the lost necklace, one reads that for the 
one evening, at the brilliant ball, the necklace 
shone like real gems, and gave to its vain wearer 
quite a striking appearance. But the tragedy set 
in on the way home, when the false gems of paste 
began to melt and vanish, leaving the loser naught 
save a life of servility and toil by way of repara- 
tion to the owner. Ah, it is sad, but true as it Is 
sorrowful, that any possession in the material 
realm will soon or late melt away from our 
grasp. In what does a man's life ^'consist," then? 
In life. Only as one can lay claim to life can one 
be sure of any value that is permanent, and only 
in life-fields can life be found. 

The spirit of the seeker determines what he 
shall find. With a desire to find life, he can 
make discoveries in all fields of endeavor. To 
set out to find life in the abstract would be to 
pursue a will-o'-the-wisp, but to strive after it in 



THE LIFE MORE ABUNDANT 137 

business, science, literature, or the social sphere 
is quite feasible. The finding of life is realized 
only in some practical pursuit. All that a man 
learns and does may become aids in attaining 
unto what we call the imperishable goods. Two 
men acquire learning, the one a materialist, the 
other a life-seeker. In the end, the former has 
used up his possessions in seeing and hearing 
and eating and drinking, while the latter has 
only tapped the hidden springs of joy which flow 
on unceasingly, and with increased volume. The 
distinction between secular and Christian educa- 
tion consists in the very thing that I am endeavor- 
ing to emphasize, viz., that any education that 
does not point beyond the realm of the physical, 
the plane of meat and bread, is secular, I do not 
care where it is taught; and all education that 
mounts above the physical and points with assur- 
ance to the world of spirit is essentially Chris- 
tian. It may be taught in America or China, in 
the State university or Church college, but no 
matter where, it is really Christian if it opens up 
in the soul of the tutored a genuine desire for 
the invisible wealth of which the Master spoke 
when he referred to the '^life more abundant." 

The Ideal set up in the life-more-abundant goal 
offers a marvelous paradox, for it hypothecates in 



138 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

humanity the qualities of both dreamer and actor. 
One of the dynamic truths of the new Christian- 
ity was that **young men should see visions and 
old men should dream dreams/' One naturally 
thinks of a dreamer as lying very still, while the 
actor is generally viewed as a person not given to 
dreaming, scarcely taking time to idealize, but 
always in motion toward a goal. Both views are 
right to an extent; for men can not act while 
they dream, nor dream In acting. Yet, the truth 
of the paradox is evident, in that, with the life- 
seeker, activities follow dreams; for after stren- 
uous movements on the field, a more productive 
realm is opened up for dreaming and vision- 
seeing. Reciprocal relations continuously exist 
between these factors in the great ideal, mutually 
strengthening each other. To bridge the chasm 
between dreams and completed acts Is the finest 
of arts known to the race. Either without the 
other is totally ineflicient in the attainment of the 
imperishable goods. The man who dreams, and 
executes not, ever becomes less practical, until 
finally he is lost in the confusing fogs of a hope- 
less unreality, while the visionless actor, in up- 
rooting weeds and briers in God's garden, ruth- 
lessly destroys many a sweet flower which the 
world sadly needs. 



THE LIFE MORE ABUNDANT 139 

In order to make dreams live in action, the 
dreamer must have what is commonly called en- 
thusiasm. Without it, any dream is as dead as 
the proverbial door-nail. I am aware that a 
good deal of sneering is indulged in against en- 
thusiasm, because it is not essentially intellectual 
— and to be intellectual is one of the greatest 
desires of a proud mind. But, let me ask, what 
does intellectuality amount to apart from en- 
thusiasm? Is it more than a mere dream itself? 
Profound interest in one's work will generally 
evolve enough intellectuality to accomplish its 
ends, while intellect, unaided by deep emotions of 
interest, will remain cold and unproductive. 
Nothing so fully supplies this needed ingredient 
for our work as a taste of the more abundant 
life, a real appreciation of its sweetness and con- 
tent This appreciation of life can be gotten only 
by living it, really experiencing it. To live it, 
one must come into vital contact with the great 
Mind, with the Master, who said, **I come to 
bring life; I am life." A cultivation of ac- 
quaintanceship with Him ever brings with it the 
appreciation in question, the recognition of true 
values, by which one makes the first discoveries in 
the rich gold-fields of life. Then, with the dis- 
covery of gold, enthusiasm is sure to follow; for 



I40 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

whoever, even in his dreams, discovered a pot of 
hidden treasure, and felt not the blood surge 
through his heart more swiftly? 

This, therefore, I declare with all faith : he 
that once gets a taste of the real life will have 
more of it, even tho it involve the strenuous work 
of transforming the stuff composing dreams into 
substantial elements, the products of activities. 
The man void of enthusiasm and interest in life 
simply has no conception of what the true living 
is. He is ignorant of his own resources. While 
making appraisal of various values about him, he 
has totally failed to appraise with any accuracy 
the unlimited treasures hidden in his own soul. 
The more abundant life might be had by breaking 
an enclosing wall, and lo! he perishes like a fa- 
ding pot-plant, with no kind hands to transplant 
it to a more fertile bed. He starves because he 
will not open his mouth for bread; he perishes, 
with the goblet full of the wine of life prest hard 
against his sealed lips. 



B 



Chapter XI 

THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT 

UT granted the truth of every preceding 
assertion relating to the spiritual possibilities 
of man as the central figure in the new empire of 
life, the development of his potentialities is by no 
means capable of accomplishment excepting un- 
der yet another divine dispensation. Of what 
value IS life to man unless he knows how to use 
and interpret it? A gold-seeker, wrecked upon 
the ocean, is embarrassed by the bag of precious 
metal which he tries to carry ashore. It would 
mean a fortune to him if he could safely land it; 
but it means death to him if he still clings to 
it. And yet again, there may be a formula for 
every known disease, if man but knew the right 
combination of the elements; but he will surely 
die with those very elements turned into enemies 
unless he knows how to mix them into a friendly 
combination. And equally true is it that the vast 
inheritance of life is of scant value to its pos- 
sessor unless he knows the formulae by which 
it may be endlessly linked and continued. Men- 

141 



142 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

tion has been made of the significant announce- 
ment of Jesus that He came to bring a more 
abundant life for the race. But His mission 
would have been futile if He had left the ignorant 
inheritor with no instrumentality of use and in- 
terpretation. He realizes that the language of 
life will be a strange tongue to men, and so He 
declares that He will send an Interpreter, whom 
He calls the Spirit of Truth. (John 15:26.) 
'^It is expedient that I go away," He further de- 
clares. (John 16:7.) Why? That this Spirit 
of Truth might enable the race to use the life 
that it has inherited. 

Brief reference has likewise been made to 
Saint Paul's declaration of this same Spirit's un- 
utterable groaning and continuous intercession for 
man. (Rom. 8: 26.) That is, God has not left 
the human heart alone, embarrassed by its very 
riches, weighted down in the wreckage of time by 
the abundance of wealth that It was unable to 
carry ashore. The Spirit's office is to supplement 
the scant strength of the distrest mariner, and to 
help him with his treasure to reach land. The 
Spirit of Truth is to help the soul construct a 
new world out of the myriad elements of Life, 
so that every new combination shall be essentially 
constructive. Without the guiding hand of this 



THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT 143 

infinite Intelligence, even life combinations are 
negative and destructive, just as essentially good 
elements of matter are bad when wrongly com- 
bined. 

The above premises certainly mean that the 
creation of man is still in progress, and that the 
Creator has yet greater things in mind to do for 
and in him. Realizing this fact, I have ever be- 
fore me the possibility of becoming continuously 
a higher and truer type of being by utilizing the 
instrumentality that is mine as a gift. 

I am living in a new world, that of Spirit. It 
IS co-extensive with the world of life. Spirit is 
the language of life. If I can learn the language 
of Spirit I know how to speak in terms of life, 
and am assured of an ever-increasing dispensation 
of its riches. 

The next great achievement of the race is that 
of acquiring the language of the Spirit. It is only 
by so doing that we may hope to become citizens 
of the larger universe. For as human language 
is a necessary acquirement for the cosmopolitan 
in the earth, so is divine language an essential to 
an understanding of God. Without the spoken 
word nations would deteriorate in all branches of 
enlightenment and civilization, becoming nothing 
more than mere physical organisms, living accord- 



144 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

ing to mechanical laws. But the spoken word 
makes the world's thought a common possession, 
which, with additions through the centuries, em- 
braces the sum total of all knowledge. It links 
the race with itself for all time. In like manner, 
the language of Spirit, acquired by man, enables 
the learner to understand the nature of the Being 
that made him, and to learn from that Being 
His will and purposes. In short, the finite soul 
may, in prayer, communicate with the infinite 
Soul, and so, become more like Him. 

It is true that there are many difficult lan- 
guage-forms that man finds it hard or impossible 
at the present to use; these he must leave to the 
Spirit who ''makes intercession for him with 
groanings which can not be uttered." The en- 
treaty must be made, the act of creation must 
proceed; and so, when man's lips become dumb 
God utters the entreaty to Himself for him, and 
when man's hands are strangely confused in 
completing his own creation, God rounds out the 
defective proportions for him. 

If I were asked to give some concrete example 
of what I mean by the unmastered language of 
Spirit I should at once refer to the greatest joys 
and sorrows that come to our earthly lives. We 
have the joy of vision as we gaze upon a land- 



THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT 145 

scape, and words can not express it; tears of joy 
may spring to the eye, or, as Wordsworth says, 
there may be in the vision ^^thoughts too deep 
for tears." But the language of tears of joy is 
known to the Spirit. Likewise, an inexpressible 
sorrow, deeper than tears, may endeavor to utter 
its plaint in broken-hearted groans. But the 
Spirit knows well what they mean. 

The philosophy of Jesus may be summed up 
in Its relation to life in words like these: "He 
was the bringer of Life as an infinite and eternal 
inheritance, and the Spirit is the Transformer of 
human elements into a new and complete union 
with that Life." Man can fully express himself 
only as he has caught the Spirit of the Master. 
But having so done, he can utilize all natural 
forces and focalize them upon the one life-point 
until it blazes with the Divine illumination. 

In the field of art, examples of what I mean 
may be found in abundance. Hegel has divided 
art into ancient, classic, and Christian. The first 
presents matter as being distinctly superior to 
spirit. Somewhere, beneath the mass of matter 
there may be spirit, but it Is not only secondary 
to matter In Its essential nature, but is, further- 
more, so totally eclipsed by overmastering mate- 
riality as to have but small play in Its finite world. 



146 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

Egyptian art offers a striking example of this 
type. Whether one pauses by the colossal 
pyramid, or lingers amid the ruins of some ancient 
temple, the same depressing sense of the 
supremacy of gross material elements chills the 
soul. There is in it all the discouraging attitude 
of the sphinx, whose face is stoically non-com- 
mittal of any truth that lies buried in its stony 
heart. There may be a spirit somewhere beneath 
the surface, but the bare possibility leaves the 
investigating mind at a total loss as to how it 
may be found. The ultimate effect upon the ob- 
server is that of doubt and skepticism as to the 
reality of spirit in the first place; and in the sec- 
ond, if possibly the spirit may dwell within, it is 
conceived of as being unable to break through its 
enclosing shell. 

Classic art, represented most strikingly by the 
Greeks, seems to recognize spirit in all of its de- 
velopment. But spirit, as an entity, never fully 
extricates itself from matter. In its efforts at 
disenthrallment, the prisoner never gets further 
than Prometheus, bound to the rock. Beauty and 
grace of form are always present, but these must 
ever display themselves In connection with the 
essentially earth-born element. Spirit, under such 
restraint, can never fully express herself. Tho 



THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT 147 

she may lift the head of a god out of the grip of 
matter, his feet will drag as he rises, resounding 
with the clang of chains upon Olympus. 

But Christian art, altho it may lose in some 
exquisite forms of beauty, does break away from 
matter, rising into the region of pure spirit. And 
once extricated, the Spirit of Christian art is in 
the sphere of universal freedom, possest of wings 
of Faith and Hope. The result of this highest 
type of art is the opening of the mind to the world 
of the Infinite, where an untrammeled imagina- 
tion may build as high as it wills. 

And the highest office of this highest type is 
that of making man into something finer and 
better than he has ever been. For, assuredly, the 
imagination never undertook so noble a task as 
that of constructing a new ideal of manhood. 
Every faculty of mind and heart has full play and 
liberty. And the wonderful possibilities thus ac- 
corded to a liberated mind, strongly connote the 
imperfections that have hitherto impeded the 
progress of the race. Man, as a factor in the 
material world, of which he is an essential part, 
has met defeat, since the very forces that he has 
corralled and harnessed have, in turn, overcome 
him. To leave him on a field of such doubtful 
conquest is to render any philosophy of life un- 



148 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

satisfacrory and self-contradictory. On that field, 
man is a failure; give him the freedom of a 
liberated spirit, and he is a glorious success, a 
grand victory and triumph. The office of the 
Spirit is to perfect nuan into what he ought to be. 
In this world of Spirit there is not only a new 
language, but a spiritualized counterpart of all 
material entities that are accounted of essential 
value by man. On no other basis of explanation 
would this earth be at all understandable. What 
is "Heaven" unless it represents such a spirituali- 
zation and unfoldment of all that is best In the 
world? And who would care to go there if he 
were assured he would find himself an utter 
stranger to all that he found? 



Chapter XII 
THE ENTITY OF CHARACTER 

WE like the term ^^practical," and whatever 
system of thought, ethics or religion would 
appeal to man must demonstrate its right to be 
listed under this term. The race, as a whole, 
simply will not commit its hope to a system of 
truth that is so mixed with doubt as to render 
it largely guesswork. 

In the immediately preceding chapter I have 
briefly set forth the philosophy of Jesus in its 
practical application to man's needs as a religious 
being. And in that doctrine I have declared the 
work of the Spirit to be essential for its fulfilment ; 
without it, the message of the Nazarene to the 
world must have remained unheard; His evangel 
of hope must have died away for want of some 
one to carry it forward through the centuries. 
But now, in this busy twentieth century of ours, 
men will ask. Of what value is this work of the 
Spirit to us? Can it, and does it, meet our 
needs? In short, men want to know just what 
sort of concrete resultant is to come to them by 

149 



I50 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

the union of the Spirit with their own spirits. 
They would have something tangible; lay hold 
of a product that is a reality, and which can be 
considered as an asset of the soul. 

In answer to such inquiries Christianity has to 
say that not only does the Spirit produce, in con- 
junction with man, a result that is an entity, but 
it is the most real and valuable entity of society 
and civilization, namely, character. What is 
there in literature or history that is more real to 
the thought of the world than that? Are the 
conquests of Napoleon any more real than the 
character of that genius? Does any man con- 
sider the achievements of Washington without 
continuously thinking of the character of the man 
that lay beneath and behind every act of patriotic 
service? I should say that the character of any 
citizen in a community is the real standard of 
appraisal by which that man is to be judged as a 
valuable or worthless asset to that community. 
Now, such a far-reaching premise as this being 
accepted, we may feel safe in saying that of all 
practical and beneficial processes going on in the 
world at this time, none is so much to be em- 
phasized as that which builds up good character 
among the inhabitants. 

Let us look into the process. Somewhere 



THE ENTITY OF CHARACTER 151 

within my being there is a heart of action, a 
motive-force of moral conduct. The Master has 
likened this heart to a treasury, in which are de- 
posited the possessions of an individual. It is 
a repository of life's actions. Just as the pre- 
cipitate falls to the bottom of the test-tube when 
the proper re-agent Is poured into the solution, 
the gold and silver of moral values is flung down 
Into the repository of the heart as the result of 
activities. Every day this process is going on and 
every Individual is gathering into himself certain 
essential qualities which will determine whether 
he is rich or poor, valuable or worthless to the 
world. Not all precipitates in the laboratory are 
of equal value; neither is every act of the Indi- 
vidual of equal moral worth. Some acts arc 
strongly enough saturated with high moral quality 
to render them noteworthy in the history of the 
performers; others leave the actor changed but 
little In riches or poverty. But so much Is true: 
There Is, perhaps, no performance whatever In 
the world of human Intelligence that does not 
either remotely or directly connote some ethical 
quality. But It needs be said at this point also 
that there exists a subtle danger of underestima- 
ting or overestimating the moral worth of an In- 
dividual upon the actual poverty or richness of a 



152 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

single performance. Kings have been guilty of 
deeds unworthy any degenerate in their realms, 
while many a peasant has displayed nobility of 
character worthy of royalty. It is true that a 
saintly soul has, under trial, been stained by some 
great sin, while a low-browed criminal has shown 
a magnanimity on some rare occasion that won 
the admiration of all the good. In either case, 
it is difficult to appraise the striking example of 
good or evil in the final estimate of character, at 
its essential value. 

It is palpable to every one, therefore, that the 
filling of life's treasury involves the most com- 
plex activities known to the student of the soul. 
Sometimes men do the unaccountable, even to 
themselves. Wrong motives date back many 
generations in their origin, and only omniscience 
can sift out the compound responsibilities and 
place them where they belong. Some unac- 
countable rudiment of a past age may, like the 
vermiform appendix, assert itself at the most in- 
opportune time, and from an absolutely unknown 
cause. The inheritor of the rudiment has to 
suffer from the very organ that was in a remote 
age of service to his ancestors. Moral quality 
in actions has changed radically during the cen- 
turies. It was a manly thing for my piratical 



THE ENTITY OF CHARACTER 153 

Viking antecedents to scour the seas in search of 
treasure that belonged to others. My German 
forebears were accustomed, with clear con- 
sciences, to use human skulls as drinking-cups 
from which they joyously quaffed the blood of 
their enemies. Such performances nowadays 
would be very reprehensible; but descendents of 
these barbarians are living to-day who take other 
people's property, and, in a figurative, yet ter- 
ribly true sense, drink the blood of friend and 
foe alike. But who is able to judge these unfor- 
tunate inheritors except the Omniscient? Happily, 
we have inherited the unaccountable good impulse 
more abundantly than the bad. Some September 
zephyr, some lost chord of music, a spring bud 
or flower, or a snow-storm in winter may bring 
to the inheriting soul subtle suggestions and in- 
tuitions from long ago, telling it of the beauty 
of goodness. Anon the heart picks up a gem 
from the trash-pile of the centuries and finds 
within its crystal depths wondrous refractions of 
light from the face of the Son of Man who 
passed that way long, long ago. 

The rustle of falling leaves in autumn days 
awakens in the soul strange longings after the 
Being whom the long-ago forest-men and cave- 
dwellers tried to find. Perhaps they endeavored 



154 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

to soften His anger by bloody human sacrifices, 
but their misconception of His nature has been 
slowly rectified through the centuries, and now, 
the modern soul has the nameless longing after 
Him, without that fearful dread and fear 
which haunted the cave-dweller. All of these 
intuitions, hopes, yearnings are the refinements 
of much rough ore melted in the crucible of time, 
and now that they are being strained out into 
pure gold the possessor can know its value by 
carrying it to the Assayer of the universe. It 
is ready to pass into the current coin of the 
Kingdom. 

Let us be fair to our dual self, and revert to 
the painful fact that there is in the kingdom of 
the soul much of the counterfeit coin, a vast deal 
of brass that has not yet been filtered out. Slowly 
but surely the work of extricating has been done, 
but there is yet a staggering amount to do before 
we can declare that humanity as a whole connotes 
absolute values, with a standard karat of fineness 
stamped upon them. If autumn leaves, rustling 
to the earth, lure the soul back through centuries 
of divine intuitions after God, so does the 
freighted breeze from distant poppy-fields of sin 
overcome the heart with drowsiness and deaden- 
ing anesthesia. Men are everywhere going astray 



THE ENTITY OF CHARACTER 155 

under the stupefying effects of sin. The cumula- 
tive wrongs of the centuries are mysteriously piled 
at the door of unfortunate souls who lift their 
helpless hands appealingly to Heaven for help. 
Worse, some brutalized life, with seemingly more 
than its share of inherited evil, seems to glory in 
its bestiality. 

Confronted by the inexorable law of Sinai 
which visits iniquity not only to the fourth but 
fortieth generation, we turn our eyes toward the 
eternal ''hills whence cometh our help." We 
must be idealists to believe In the redemption of 
which I speak. We must take things as they are, 
and dream of them as they ought to be. Such 
an attitude makes real to us the best that man 
can hope. All of the combinations of noble soul- 
forces in the past are brought together in a new 
personality that ever tends toward the Ideal. As 
the seventy-seven or more elements that make up 
the crust of our earth and its surrounding atmos- 
phere form every compound that Is both good 
and bad, so do the many Inherited traits from the 
past compose the sum total of the race's good- 
ness and badness. A good man has a pre- 
dominance within him of compounded elements 
that are constructive, the evil man has a pre- 
dominance of those that tend toward destruction. 



156 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

All good and evil become, thereby, relative terms, 
for no man can yet claim the absolute in the good, 
nor be charged with being absolutely evil. But 
the tendency is the criterion that Is to determine 
where the Individual Is to be placed. Judged by 
such a standard, the final destiny of man is 
capable of a continuous change, dependent upon 
his use or rejection of such help as may be 
proffered him by the Master of the universe of 
Spirit. 

Left unaided the human soul could never 
eliminate from her complex self the elements that 
tend toward destruction. It Is here that the 
Spirit, of whom Jesus prophesied, comes to the 
rescue of man, and demonstrates His mastery of 
destiny by a process of elimination. He becomes 
the re-agent, Introduced into the life of the indi- 
vidual, and It is through the combination of 
human elements with Him that a new precipitate 
Is thrown down from the complex solution. This 
resultant Is a compound of positive goodness, 
made up of the divine and human agencies in- 
volved. This process, continued long enough, is 
destined to form the rich deposit of character, 
which Is to be embodied In the superman of time 
and eternity. In this logical course of develop- 
ment, a real entity Is evolved that Is as much a 



THE ENTITY OF CHARACTER 157 

fact of existence as a star or sun, and which, 
being spiritual, is more abiding. By this method, 
the spirit is filtering out the good elements, and 
leaving those that are useless; but the work is 
done with the cooperation and consent of the 
human factor. And this but means that the 
human will must determine its destiny in some 
large sense. ''Let him that is righteous be right- 
eous still; and let him that is filthy be filthy still." 
Unless the process of elimination is permitted, 
the refusing individual remains a chaotic mass of 
ill-assorted elements. 

It is clear from the above conclusions that a 
good man is more than a mere tendency or poten- 
tiality — he IS an actuality. For a good man is 
one who is not only disposed to do good acts, but 
who actually does them. A mere tendency toward 
goodness is by no means enough to lift man into 
the companionship of angels. Any man who is 
entitled to the encomium, "good," is one who has 
a character so positivized by the Spirit as to par- 
take of the abiding nature of that Spirit. Such a 
character is undying, since its whole being is 
within the realm of life. 

But while the character of the Christian is an 
entity, it Is still filled with unrealized potentiali- 
ties, so that ''it doth not yet appear" what man 



158 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

shall be. Reverting to Bergson's figure of the ex- 
ploding shell, this marvelous aggregation of vital 
forces into the entity of an individual character 
has within it dynamics enough to interest God 
forever. The constructive work of the Spirit 
expands toward the infinite as these exploding 
centers of life multiply themselves unceasingly. 
Instead of being something vague, indefinite, 
mystical, the Christian's character becomes the 
most meaningful term in the vocabulary of the 
race. It is not possible to destroy it; on the other 
hand. It is the one indestructible possession that 
man may carry out of one world into another. 
Character is not only immortal; it is immortality 
Itself. Being the resultant of fusion of the spirit 
of man with the Spirit of God, Christian charac- 
ter must have the everlastingness of God. 



Chapter XIII 
THE VALUE OF A SOUL 

SUCH a view of man as to his ultimate possi- 
bilities of development, forces us to the con- 
clusion that we have never, in the history of the 
race, made an appraisal of the human soul that is 
at all commensurate with its value. If the in- 
dividual, in his acquirement of a character pos- 
sessing essentially divine elements in its content, 
is seemingly the sole survivor of all occupants 
and entities out of this world, we may logically 
conclude that the entire planet derives its mean- 
ing from man in the final reaches of his destiny. 
We could almost venture a step further and say, 
that so far as it is given us to know, humanity is 
the exponent of the entire universe, and that as 
man Is lifted into an expression of the power of 
that exponent he is accompanied by the Spirit 
along an infinite path. For man assuredly 
touches all earthly elements with a shaping hand, 
and in some considerable sense lays tribute upon 
stars, planets and satellites of the expanded uni- 

159 



i6o THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

verse. For he can not till the soil without taking 
knowledge of the sun, nor sail the seas without 
the guidance of the stars. He is linked by the 
law of destiny to the greatest as well as the 
smallest things. 

In the light of such a sweeping connotation of 
the term man, it is startling to reflect upon the 
trivial consideration that has been given to human 
life in the past, and which, in many respects, is 
still accorded it. The very greatest of the earlier 
civilizations cared little that man suffered, starved, 
died* Human slavery, within the recollection of 
the present age, was viewed as a matter of no 
concern. The superiority of one race to another 
was asserted upon the basis of religious convic- 
tion. The butcheries of the middle ages under 
the guise of religion showed a total lack in valua- 
tion of human life. The anomaly of religion, 
intended for man's uplift, being used to crush 
him, still fills the observer with wonder, as he 
follows the course of conflicts through long cen- 
turies. War, with its bloodshed, atrocities, de- 
struction to life and property, has ever been an 
insult to the Almighty. 

Napoleon, during the famous Moscow cam- 
paign, was riding over the bloody field of 
Smolensk with one of his marshals. The French 



THE VALUE OF A SOUL i6i 

had been victorious, and the loyal lieutenant of 
the great conqueror exclaimed: ''A great vic- 
tory, Sire, but made at a tremendous cost." 

'*Ah!" scornfully ejaculated the Emperor, "you 
can not make an omelette without breaking a few 
eggs." 

A wounded Frenchman, lying on the ground, 
heard his adored ruler speak thus slightingly of 
the slaughter of his fellow soldiers. Years after 
the battle of Waterloo had been fought, this same 
soldier, having survived the sufferings of that 
terrible invasion of Russia, was giving an account 
of his sensations and reflections as he lay on the 
field of Smolensk and heard the flippant comment 
of the world-conqueror concerning human life. 

*^I had ever idolized him," declared he, '^but 
my idol was crusht and broken there. In my own 
mind I foresaw the sinking of the star of Napo- 
leon was a matter of fate." 

If the Corsican had but imbibed the revolu- 
tionary teachings of the Nazarene, he would 
never have thought thus of life as being a mere 
tool with which to carve out empires and destroy 
kingdoms. The career of Napoleon had its be- 
ginning in an upheaval of political conditions that 
lured the colossal genius of warfare toward a 
course of self-aggrandizement terminating in his 



1 62 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

final downfall; but the future of Jesus took its 
direction from a different type of upheaval, hav- 
ing to do with the soul-life of the race. Every 
parable that He spoke was revolutionary in its 
tendency. And it is but logical that He, follow- 
ing the trend of His teachings, should realize an 
infinite expansion of ideal and life involved in 
them. Jesus is at home when discussing anything 
that relates to man's destiny. What He might 
have said of things or principles in the abstract, 
had He so willed, I do not venture to assert. But 
this I do declare with full conviction: He never 
exprest Himself in abstract terms during His 
earthly career. And whatever He said about 
material things was only by way of illustrating 
the matchless worth of an individual. He de- 
precated above all things the loss of life, as be- 
longing to man, and it is in keeping with such a 
principle that He spent so much of His time 
in the healing of disease. 

But the teachings of Jesus went far deeper 
than a mere respect for, and sympathy with, life 
as only an entity of the Creator's Kingdom. He 
declared the foundations of the Kingdom were 
based upon child-life. The life of a human being 
in its beginning is at the center of God's universe. 
And whatever man becomes is only an expansion, 



THE VALUE OF A SOUL 163 

a development, of this life as it came out from 
the Creator's Self. Wordsworth expresses it: 

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting; 

And Cometh from afar: 
Not in entire forgetfulness. 
And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 

From God, who is our home: 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!'* 

It Is, then, the beginnings of life that make man 
of value; his source, origin, make his destiny of 
significance. And Jesus expends all of the mighty 
forces of His being in breaking the walls of the 
**prison-house" that have grown around the de- 
veloping youth and mature man, in order that the 
prisoner might '*see the light and whence it 
flows." The sacredness of human life can be 
realized only as it is conceived of as coming 
directly from God. 

The history of Jesus is one prolonged answer 
to the old-time inquiry. What is man? And the 
sacrifice of His body vicariously Is a declaration 
that man Is the dearest object of God's creation, 
that he Is a child of the Almighty. Such a revo- 
lutionary concept of humanity has, of necessity, 
been long In Its unfoldment, and Is yet to be 



1 64 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

grasped in its fulness. For according to its es- 
sential meaning, a human life is too sacred to be 
abused, maltreated, or scorned. Such a view 
opens the way for the most profound constructive 
philosophy of humanity, being foundational to all 
modern social work looking toward protecting, 
conserving and developing the individual. Men 
stand condemned by their own consciousness of 
divine origin as they behold the squalor, poverty 
and ignorance of the majority of their brothers 
and sisters. It is not going too far to say that 
the housing conditions of a large portion of the 
laboring class are an insult to the Almighty, since 
those conditions are unsanitary and unfavorable 
to the development of a sense of dignity and self- 
respect. If a tenement owner allows occupants 
of his properties to be huddled up in quarters 
where it is not only impossible to keep clean, but 
difficult to keep virtuous, can such an owner have 
the spirit of Jesus, who placed the Child In the 
midst of the kingdom, and begged for him the con- 
sideration of the world? And yet, taking as an 
example, the cities of the South, where are 
gathered hordes of the negro population, we find 
housing conditions decidedly unfavorable to 
physical well-being and moral development. It 
Is well known to every student of such conditions 



THE VALUE OF A SOUL 165 

that very few of the tenements occupied by this 
class are provided with sufficient bathing and other 
facilities for health and cleanliness. Families are 
crowded together in a manner that makes the 
conserving of family purity among the inter- 
mingling families almost impossible. 

The truth of the above statements emphasizes, 
as Heaven-imposed, the duty of every landlord 
to build such houses as shall render it easier for 
the tenant to bring up his children with a measure 
of decency. And the day must come when it 
shall be considered a heinous social sin to erect 
any other class of tenements. 

I like to think of Jesus as being the great 
Leader of the people. I consider that the Son 
of Man was never so serenely satisfied as when 
He was leading a great multitude out into the 
countryside, there to speak to them out of an 
affectionate soul. They were motley, ignorant, 
untidy, ill-fed and ill-clad, but they were human 
beings, and it was His mission to touch their 
lives in that deep, personal way that would con- 
vince them of His friendship. He saw them 
sick, and healed them; recognized their hunger, 
and fed them. And whatever men may think of 
the miracles of the loaves and fishes, whereby this 
hungry rabble was sometimes fed, we may be 



1 66 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

sure that to One who loved the multitude nothing 
could have been more appealing than the act of 
feeding them. To Him it was such a sacred 
object — a body of human flesh, no matter how 
badly It was appareled, just because It was the 
house — the tenement — In which one of His 
brothers lived. Because of His valuation of this 
body. He coulcl conceive of no social duty so high 
as this — love thy neighbor as thyself. 

And this second of the commandments offers 
a new ground of appraisal for oneself. For to 
love my neighbor as myself means that the norm 
of my attitude toward the whole world is the at- 
titude which I bear to myself. I am indissolubly 
linked to my fellows. And this does not mean 
that I am to be a self-centered egotist, a con- 
ceited and puffed-up soul; for to appreciate my- 
self Is to recognize my true value, to know just 
what I am worth. It Is just as wrong, from the 
viewpoint of the divine economics, to undervalue 
as to overvalue my resources. The one Is on a 
parity with returning property below Its value in 
order to escape just taxation; the other Is com- 
parable to watering securities to the deception of 
those who would buy. A fair and just return 
before the tribunal of conscience of what my in- 
dividual soul Is worth Is necessary If I would 



THE VALUE OF A SOUL 167 

correctly appraise the worth of other souls. God's 
system of economics demands that we should 
link ourselves together on a common ground of 
brotherhood, looking toward the saving of all 
human values, since they are so immeasurably 
precious. According to this standard, no man 
can pray for himself without groaning in spirit 
for the uplift and redemption of others, and no 
scheme of his life is unselfish unless It ever con- 
siders its effect upon other members of the race. 
This recognition of the value of human life is 
absolutely necessary to the accomplishment of 
great things. Self-confidence is only self-valua- 
tion, and whatever is called self-confidence with- 
out the basis of true valuation is mere folly. 
George Eliot, with all of her virility of mind, 
was late in beginning her work simply because 
she had no confidence in her ability. The re- 
sources were there, but she did not believe In 
them. With the growth of her estimate of her 
soul-forces she developed a confidence In her 
ability to utilize them. And this leads me to 
say that all genuine recognition of soul-values 
must be followed by a realization of them. It 
simply can not be otherwise. The Son of Man 
had such faith In His kingdom as to liken It to 
a gem, hid in a field, which, when a man had 



1 68 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

discovered, he bought at the cost of his entire 
possessions. 

Much pain and hardship is to be undergone, 
it is true, if one would exploit the resources of 
one's soul. To find the hidden gems of earth 
much toil must be expended in digging and sift- 
ing. Likewise, to pull up out of the soil its rich 
potentialities into food-compounds there must be 
much clearing of ground, digging up of stumps 
and roots, breaking and pulverizing of rocks. 
But the harvests that result make all pain and toil 
seem as naught. For If I can "come to myself" — 
realize upon my assets — see myself, face to face — 
I am immeasurably rich. 

And the while I am realizing myself, I am 
helping others to realize themselves, both mate- 
rially and spiritually. Whoever makes bread 
more plentiful is a true brother to man, and he 
that opens up the treasures of spiritual riches to 
his fellows has tasted the joy of being neighborly. 



Chapter XIV 
IN THE SMITHY OF GOD 

1HAVE mentioned the love of Jesus for the 
multitude, and I would revert again to the 
deep compassion which the masses aroused in His 
soul. ''And when He saw the multitudes, He 
was moved with compassion on them," indicates 
more than a passing whim, superficial senti- 
mentalism, professional charity on His part. A 
great wave of pathos and heart-sickening sorrow 
swept over His soul. One looks upon a horrible 
accident, sees a life mxangled and crusht under 
cruel wheels, and feels the sensation as if the 
heart were melting; paleness is written upon the 
observer's face, and he reels into unconsciousness, 
perhaps, under the shock of the vision of a 
broken body. Such was the sense of pity that 
Jesus had as He saw the multitude, ''because they 
fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep hav- 
ing no shepherd." That is, these people were as 
a flock of sheep, flayed and skinned, torn by briers 
and thorns, bleeding from the teeth of wolves, 
unshepherded, uncared for. And for that reason, 

169 



I70 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

He was moved almost to fainting. These people 
had been exploited by robbers and thieves, el- 
bowed from places in which to work out the 
bread problem. They had no chance. And it 
is here that Jesus anticipates the industrial 
problems of all ages. He is concerned in the 
masses, as a whole. 

It was not an abstraction with Him, as with 
Emerson, who is quoted as saying, *T like man, 
not men." Concretely, the Son of Man cared for 
the crowd, with all of its unloveliness, dirt, 
squalor, snarling and snapping. Why? Because, 
economically, the crowd holds within itself the 
aggregate wealth of the spiritual universe. 

But the Master was no mere dreamer. Keep- 
ing before Him always the vision of the multi- 
tude, He turned the emotions aroused into 
focalized effect upon the individual. He never 
allowed the mass-effect of the many to divert His 
mind from attention to the one. For that one 
must ever be the leavening unit of the crowd. 

To talk to the masses is much easier than to 
talk to the individual. One gets only a panorama 
of the former; but with the latter, there must be 
a face-to-face view, a looking of one soul down 
into the depths of another soul. Jesus kept an 
even balance between the two effects. He al- 



IN THE SMITHY OF GOD 171 

lowed nothing to come between Him and the 
individual. And for this reason He seemed 
often to repress Himself as He discoursed of 
living, growing things in the material world. 
The poet could almost wish that Jesus had said 
more about the growing lilies: what a beautiful 
piece of literature it would have been for all 
ages! And why did He not say more of the 
corn-fields, with their rustling blades and ripen- 
ing ears? Not because He did not appreciate 
their beauty, I must think; the few touches of the 
artist here and there in His parables show that 
He recognized the beautiful in everything. But 
His philosophy of life demanded that even a lily 
or a stalk of corn had only one mission — to make 
manhood. All plant and animal growths are 
useful as vehicles upon which man may be trans- 
ported to his destiny. There are some sixteen 
elements composing the human body, but they 
can not enter the system In a crude, raw state and 
be utilized by the digestion for muscle-building. 
They must be pulled up in large measure by the 
plants, and so mixed and combined as to make 
them wholesome to the human species. Or, these 
plants are consumed by lower animals upon which 
man feeds, and finally reach the human body, 
ready for nerve, bone, and tissue. Man's body 



W »* m« ivMt^ ^ mtmm 'i rm ^fn m •^'^ tf - M ''^' » ^» K » * i m mmirm - mmt iim^- ' " * • ' *< 



172 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

becomes, then, a great refinery, in which all crude 
elements are transformed into the finest output 
of creation. 

By this process we realize that God is con- 
tinuously creating men according to the formula 
of the centuries. Man becomes God's refined 
being, having been carried through many fires and 
laboratories. He loses something, it is true; for 
man can not have all of the sweetness of the lily, 
the peculiar glory of the corn-fields, the strength 
of the lion and tiger. ''There is one glory of the 
sun, and another glory of the moon, and another 
glory of the stars." But man gets the best for 
himself, by the process of elimination and absorp- 
tion, that the Creator has determined for him. 

And since God has been willing to make such 
a tremendous outlay in nature for the benefit of 
man, and for his final development, it is no marvel 
that Jesus declared God's love for man to be 
greater than His love for birds and flowers. 
And we would reasonably expect Jesus to con- 
centrate His chief attention upon humanity, 
rather than upon ''nature" and the surrounding 
world. The material world becomes only a 
medium through which life flows, like an ocean- 
tide, sweeping on in resistless power. The life 
oozes through, like water percolating through 



IN THE SMITHY OF GOD 173 

desert sands, finally breaking into the individual 
stream called ma7t. More: the divergent currents 
break yet again into great divisions which are 
racial, and we have the divisions of white, black, 
yellow, brown, and bronze peoples. These all 
have brought the pigments of color with them as 
they have passed through the great refinery, the 
circumstances and environments all being of the 
Creator's own shaping. And so, circumstance 
and environment become a part of God's method 
in the completion of man's creation. 

I have indicated the kind of regard the Creator 
has for His birds and plants. Surely He stoops 
to caress the wild violet and daisy oftentimes. 
But He never neglected a man for a flower yet; 
never will for a moment fail in His first love, 
the Child of Creation. And it grieves the heart 
of the Creator to see this favorite, man, for- 
getting his own bigger destiny in an overfond 
admiration for flower-beds. One seems so near 
to God w^hen one is surrounded by the roses of a 
sunny garden that the temptation is to lay down 
one's staff and say. Here let me live and die, 
among the sweets of the Almighty! It seems to 
be In keeping with the most artistic, refined and 
cultured life to remain there for all time. Like- 
wise, men pitch their tents by the bake-shop and 



-^«, ■ > »^ ^1 



I J'I -J t i l lllljp | l>M JUl i f — < y^i> ^ «w.H-. 



174 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

tailor-shop and say, This is a good place to spend 
my days. And it does seem to be well enough to 
the superficial mind; and reasons for feeding and 
decorating the body are so specious that the wisest 
of men must beware lest they become confused 
thereby. But the Master ever inquires, ''Is not 
the life more than meat and the body than 
raiment?" Surely, even the physical organism 
must ^ have a higher destiny than that of mere 
food and covering. I often reflect upon that un- 
fortunate soul which the ejected evil spirit found, 
on his return, ''Empty, swept and garnished.'' 
Sad enough to be empty and swept, but worst of 
all is it to be garnished! For that term signifies 
decorated, adorned, beautified, with all of the 
garments and trappings of time that would make 
a physical being beautiful. And what is it in 
even these decorations to cause sadness? Surely 
something like this: these adornments, like the 
wreaths of some festal day, soon wither and then 
all is gone. Think of a human soul, all covered 
over and bedecked with roses; it looks beautiful 
for one day, and seems a-thrill with life and fresh- 
ness. But to-morrow, the covering of beauty is 
dead, and the soul is naked, and unlovely in its 
barrenness. 

The grief to the Creator arises, not from the 



IN THE SMITHY OF GOD 175 

use of His things of beauty and utility, but from 
the abuse of them. Men are perfectly justifiable 
in admiring everything of beauty, and even in 
wearing perishable garlands. But these are only 
incidental to the soul's triumphal march to the 
Kingdom, even as the palm-branches strewn in 
the King's path were incidental to His entry into 
Jerusalem on that glad day when multitudes 
cried, '^Hosanna! Blessed is he that cometh in the 
name of the Lord." The empire of the soul can 
never inhere in anything that fades or grows old 
or dies. And when these perishable goods inter- 
vene between the soul and God, it means the 
clogging of the stream of life in its onward flow; 
it is like blocking the highway on which the heart 
travels, and compelling it to forego the joy of 
reaching the eternal city, the capital city of the 
finest affections and desires of the immortal self. 
All matter belongs to God, and out of it He 
has made a great smithy where the elements of 
manhood are better welded. He wields the 
sledge-hammer, watches with interest and sym- 
pathy the sparks as they fly. The soul of man 
turns and groans in the glowing fires, fanned by 
the breath of the Almighty. He looks down into 
the blazing soul, at Its white heat of passion and 
suffering, and with great compassion fixes His 



176 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

gaze upon it until, lo ! His eternal image is caught 
by the molten elements and congealed into an 
abiding likeness that makes man the chosen child 
of Heaven. Henceforth, the offspring knows its 
Father, by highest intuition, feeling, rather than 
seeing Him. 

But the soul must travel through the world of 
matter before it can come face to face with Him. 
Sir Oliver Lodge has said: "The boundary be- 
tween the two states — the known and the un- 
known — IS still substantial, but it is wearing thin 
in places; and like excavators engaged in boring 
a tunnel from opposite ends, amid the roar of 
water and other noises, we are beginning to hear 
now and again the strokes of the pickaxes of our 
comrades on the other side." We are working 
on this side, and the liberated forces of the race 
are working on the other side. God is with both 
sides, and He will be at the meeting-point, when 
the two rush together in tumultuous joy. 



Chapter XV 
THE QUEST FOR PERFECTION 

NO man that ever lived had such an under- 
standing of the sins of the race as did Jesus 
of Nazareth. He saw the sin of the world in its 
most vicious and revengeful forms, realized the 
death of its bite and the poison of its sting. He 
saw man at his worst oftener than at his best. 
Never did prophet or seer have less to encourage 
him than did Jesus. But persecution and 
crucifixion could not chill His sympathy for the 
multitude, whom He loved and prayed for to 
the bitter end. And even in the glory of His 
greatest triumphs, He felt a compassion for the 
masses, as stated in the foregoing pages, that had 
in it the sensation of swooning, dying. 

But if the Son of Man saw the sins of the 
race as none other ever had, so did He see the 
possibilities of the human soul as no prophet had 
been able to see them, even in his most optimistic 
mood. Jesus had faith in man and in the final 
outcome of his destiny despite his ingratitude, un- 
belief, and crime. Leverrier, noticing the aberra- 
tions in the planetary system, declared that there 

177 



178 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

must be yet another planet. So sure was he of 
his conclusions that he covered with his telescope 
the path of the oncoming orb and made the dis- 
covery of Neptune. It was in such a spirit that 
Jesus was willing to await the approach along 
the orbit of the race the new man, redeemed from 
the power of evil. He knew that some time man 
must swing Into the light of a new Heaven and 
a new earth. 

And the waiting of Jesus was by the orbit of 
a path that would lead man not only out of sin 
but unto perfection. Herein He demonstrated a 
faith that even now staggers and puzzles the souls 
of men. It seems hard enough to conceive of 
finite, sinful man as being saved from the evil, but 
to bespeak for him a salvation that leads to a 
perfect state seems too Idealistic. But Jesus Is 
essentially an idealist, and nothing, to His mind, 
can loom up as an obstacle between man and God 
sufficiently great to stop the progress of a Heaven- 
bent soul. God Is perfect, and any being that 
approaches Him must be perfect. Therefore, 
Jesus calls the race to perfection In terms that 
can not be gainsaid, altho they must be dwelt 
upon In order to be understood. 

What sort of a perfection then is man called 
upon to strive after? That which would be 



/ 

THE QUEST FOR PERFECTION 179 

commensurate in its scope with that of God? To 
make such a claim would be folly. The perfec- 
tion can be only that of a human being. Man 
may lawfully strive after the perfection of his 
kind, and so may aspire to be a perfect son of 
God. But this does not mean to be God; there 
is a difference between sonship and eternal Father- 
hood as wide as that existing between finite and 
Infinite. But to be a perfect man opens before 
the aspirant a path of infinite length; he must 
ever be a traveler on that way if he would comply 
with the Master's injunction, "Be ye perfect.'' 

Man Is enjoined, then, to strive after a perfec- 
tion that reaches the highest interpretation of the 
particular age in which he lives. The race Is 
ever moving from darkness into a clearer twilight. 
There is a social conscience to be recognized 
which is but the accumulation of every increment 
of power from age to age. The twentieth cen- 
tury man must have within him a compound of 
all of the best elements of the nineteen centuries; 
yea, of all the centuries that have preceded him. 
If he Is true to the laws of eternal progress, the 
last man to quit the shores of time must be the 
best. 

Meantime, false standards are continuously 
being set up by many, and they all have their 



i8o THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

adherents. There is much of the polite society 
of the age that does not demand a pure life. 
Irreverence is rife, divorce laws have become lax, 
places of evil are winked at as being necessary. 
And the sophist glibly reasons that whatever is 
necessary is, essentially, right, the argument lead- 
ing its champion not merely at a tangent from 
the true course, but actually forcing him to double 
back upon a track that leads him into the darkest 
ages of the past. The difficulty all arises from an 
acceptance of the wrong premise, instead of the 
idealism of Jesus. 

It is necessary for the progressive Christian to 
clash in ideal continuously with certain moral and 
religious reactionaries, just as the Founder of his 
faith clashed unto the death with the reactionaries 
of His age. The advancing Christian, then, 
seems to his opposers to be living ahead of his 
age so far as to be impractical; he is ridiculed as 
being a crank, or treated with disdain as a mystic. 
The weapon of ridicule is the last resort of those 
who are against holy living and pure thinking. 

At the center of progressive religion there lives 
the fundamental principle of moral restraint and 
self-control. Perfection is attainable not merely 
by lopping off evil tendencies, but also by a con- 
stant development of rudiments of goodness. The 



THE QUEST FOR PERFECTION i8i 

gospel of Jesus calls for the sacrifice of many de- 
sires. No matter how much money, or education, 
or culture one has obtained, the need still exists 
of throwing aside weights in order that the soul 
may speed all the faster along the orbit of life 
and truth. And since the process of elimination 
of evil is an endless one, the ideal of perfection 
ever recedes as the soul moves on. New dis- 
coveries of unused potentialities come into view 
as the litter and debris of the false are cleared 
away from soul-fields. And the idealist finds that 
it is not enough merely to avoid presumptuous 
sins, but that the demand of Heaven is for a 
constant increase in positive goodness. In the 
sense of using all of his powers to do good, the 
Christian finds that he is still, ever, always lack- 
ing; he remains a sinner by omission. As the 
energy of earth, air and sunshine are continuously 
unused in their full extent, so the idealist finds 
that there is a flood of light and life poured down 
upon him from on high which Is not utilized. 

Not only, then, is the Christian called to such 
a perfection as is Interpreted by the highest living 
of his age, but he is urged to that far-away per- 
fection which may be only dimly descried by his 
imagination; he must live according to the 
standards of the unknown. Urged on by the 



/ 



1 82 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

powerful Tightness of such a moral paradox, man 
realizes that his peace of soul lies in pressing 
toward the acquirement of something that he does 
not possess. Every sane ideal of life is capable 
of being incarnated. And this potentiality throws 
an equal burden of responsibility upon every heart 
which, in its most exalted moments of spirituality, 
aspires after the most precious states of the 
imagined world. The good man is constantly 
urged toward being a better man, and this better 
man is prest in spirit to strive after perfection. 
The soul of such a being passes the stage of joyous 
triumph upon the mere overcoming of gross 
temptations, or even of complete mastery over 
the body; the time comes when the illumined 
spirit is ecstatic only in the atmosphere of a pure 
imagination. Such an ideal forecasts a time when 
every soul having even an impure thought will 
don sackcloth as becoming garb for its sinfulness. 
It is only by such a positive and far-reaching 
idealism that the Christian can substantiate his 
claim to authority based upon the supernatural. 
For if he is willing to conform to the standards 
of the natural, his system of ethics has no better 
chance of triumph than any of a score of other 
systems. He must insist that his scheme of life 
demands that every thought or imagination of the 



THE QUEST FOR PERFECTION 183 

mind must pass in review before the tribunal of 
the Absolute. The nearest and dearest object of 
his fleshly desires must be ''plucked out" of his life 
if it be found to intervene between him and the Per- 
fect One. He is to find his superiority to all 
other systems by bending low in the valley of 
humiliation and by bestowing love upon even 
those that are hateful. His life is to be a con- 
tinuous and living sacrifice, since his Master 
based His entire system of truth upon that 
principle. 

I am aware that such an ideal strains the 
nerves of even the most consecrated soul. But 
whoever follows the career of the Captain of Sal- 
vation must concede that it was ever in His mind.. 
One thinks of Walt Whitman : 

"O Captain! my Captain! 
Our fearful trip is done; 
The ship has weathered every rack, 
The prize we sought is won. 
The port is near, the bells I hear, 
The people all exulting, 
While follow eyes the steady keel, 
The vessel grim and daring. 
But O heart! heart! heart! 
O the bleeding drops of red. 
Where on the deck my Captain lies. 
Fallen, cold and dead." 

These lines, athrill with exalted pathos, were 



1 84 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

applied by Whitman to his hero, Lincoln. But 
they have seemed to me to be befittingly applicable 
to the death-efforts of the Captain of Redemption 
to reach port from the voyage of discovery and 
salvation for all people who believe. 

I revert to the opening sentence of this volume : 
*'As the taut string has its fundamental note, 
upon which the whole musical gamut is based, so 
human life must have its fundamental, which be- 
comes a determining factor in all conduct and 
activities." For not only must there be that 
fundamental; but In every true Christian life 
there must be tenseness of nerve, a strain of effort, 
to reach the harmonies of the universal music of 
the divine symphony. Flabbiness, laxity, slack- 
ness of purpose make a decadent faith. Those 
who love ease and pleasure will allow the nerves 
to drop into a state of rest that means deadness 
to all touch of the great Musician. And the 
strange paradox follows: those who have sought 
ease thus, lose all of the real sweetness of the 
song of humanity. 

As the active, alert body may logically be In 
the path to physical health and prosperity, so 
the intense soul. In Its outlook upon the eternal 
world, with Christ the great Sacrifice at Its center, 
may be In the orbit of divine perfection. 



Chapter XVI 
THE GREATEST OF ALL DREAMS 

LOOKING through the kaleidoscope of time, 
J the Christian idealist, pointing his instrument 
toward eternity, beholds configurations of won- 
drous beauty. He sees temples and landscapes, 
forests and plains, rivers and oceans which fairly 
startle him with their glory. Averting his eyes 
from the vision and looking again upon an every- 
day world, he is filled with doubt and misgiving. 
Faith comes to his aid as he again gazes into an 
eternity which holds for him a charm and interest 
that ever increases. The land of dreams, the 
world of visions, the universe of perfection lies 
before this man of faith, the disciple of the uni- 
versal Redeemer 

When the Christian has reached such a view- 
point, he stands upon the threshold of a new 
day, at the dawn of a new selfhood. If there 
are whispering spirits in the air, his ear is un- 
clogged for their message; if the stars have a 
story to tell, their language is understandable to 
his heart. As the adolescent youth, at the thresh- 

185 



1 86 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

old of manhood, enters a world of unfolding 
mystery, so does this advancing spirit of the re- 
deemed man approach a country whose every 
symbol of existence is capable of an infinite 
realization in consciousness. Great yearnings 
take hold of the heart; the deeps of mighty seas 
seem to be broken up; the soul appears to be 
loosening herself from the moorings of time and 
the laws of gravitation, and to be taking to herself 
the wings of the imagination. 

The habitat of the soul is henceforth to be the 
land of vision; and the content of pure being, 
the invisible entities of God's great, inner world, 
enters into whatever the liberated spirit would con- 
struct. It is a new world, but in it are the essential 
elements of the old, such as the hopes and yearnings 
of the earth-born individual on some autumn 
evening when leaves rustle to the ground in a 
great woodland. And so, it is a realm where the 
Insoluble questions of time are borne for answer 
and unfoldment. What Is the ultimate end of 
human struggle, the final resultant of civilizations? 
Such questions belong to the world which the 
Christian enters by faith. 

What does the Christian carry with him into 
the realms of faith? Chief est of all of his in- 
strumentalities of achievement Is the key of 



THE GREATEST OF ALL DREAMS 187 

prayer, the attitude of entreaty. This becomes to 
him a veritable open-sesame to all of the hidden 
mysteries of the universe. The bearer of this 
master-key is to tread the highways of God's 
thought, to enter all castles and palaces of the 
King, to explore all treasure-houses where he may 
view the crown jewels of the Eternal Ruler. The 
new inhabitant is an explorer, and going afar 
seeks the corner-stones of all great surveys that 
the soul has made during creation. Wherever the 
soul of time-bound man has gone in her cravings 
for beauty and peace, there the new spirit goes 
with the power of interpretation. The quest is 
unceasing, and assuredly, in process of the search, 
the redeemed soul must come face to face in the 
new world with King Man. Eternity is God's 
answer to the souFs craving for self-realization. 
All of the appalling mystery of time must be torn 
off as a veil; the craving of the cycles must be 
realized. For I can conceive of no yearning of 
the soul greater than this: to know the essential 
nature of man, and to understand his destiny. 

And this self-realization on the part of man is 
to be accomplished in the light of a new con- 
sciousness which recognizes God as a monopolist 
of all forces, resources, potentialities. The great- 
est of all days is that eternal day whose dawn 



1 88 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

brings a flooding of the universe with the know- 
ledge of God. It is to mark the time w^hen ''the 
kingdoms of the world are become the kingdoms 
of our Lord and His Christ." Man finds him- 
self the possessor of infinite greatness because he 
IS Indissolubly linked with the Infinite. The 
weakness of the race on the shores of time is to 
be attributed to that appalling selfishness which 
refuses to make a confidant of God; which is 
unwilling to take Him into a partnership of 
thought-life. When the disillusioned soul has 
entered the new sphere, her eyes will behold a 
''new Heaven and a new Earth," because the 
Almighty will be visible, and He ever makes 
things new to those who recognize Him. 

The soul's self-realization is but the cumulative 
dream-life of the centuries on the part of indi- 
viduals and nations. Consider the latter: every 
nation has had its dreams of world-empire, of in- 
dependence, of a large place in the affairs of the 
earth. We may consider the present waking 
China, rubbing her eyes after forty centuries of 
sleep — ^but a sleep that has been troubled now 
and again by dreams. Now, she is arousing her- 
self, and looking with great, wondering eyes out 
into the country that rose before her In visions 
of the night. China wants a better religion, bet- 



THE GREATEST OF ALL DREAMS 189 

ter training of the heart, a more practical type 
of mind-training. So great has been her desire 
for the best of the universe that she has called 
upon Christian nations to take their master-key, 
prayer, and unlock with it the unknown riches of 
the Ruler of the nations. For China has a feel- 
ing that there are great secrets of government, 
of power, of national glory if she could only get 
them into the light. 

Consider the individual: his dream life is a 
cumulative inheritance from the ages. It has 
been handed down, with many adulterations, it is 
true; but in the complex makeup of each per- 
sonality there is a rich composite of a long line 
of personalities reaching into the vague and un- 
known past. Indeed, they reach back beyond the 
borders of time, since man traverses an eternal 
circle which is impinged upon by the planet on 
which he lives. If he has much to look forward 
to it is only because he has much to which he can 
look back. He has a great future because he has 
had a great past. His riches in the unexplored 
future are without computation because no calculus 
could enumerate the priceless values that lie in 
the background of his origin. The very vague- 
ness of his concept of himself in his beginnings is 
attributable to the vastness of the world in which 



190 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

he was born. He has traveled so far that he 
has lost count of the mile-posts along the road. 
And altho he is covered with dust and grime, he 
is a royal traveler still, and has his face turned 
toward kingship in the end. 

It must ever be borne in mind, however, that 
this kingship is attainable only on the fundamental 
hypothesis of essential unity. Man, by linking 
himself to God has all things; isolating himself he 
loses all. All that he has lost in the past has 
resulted through his selfish ambition to separate 
his kingdom from the Kingdom of God. By 
striving to place the crown upon his own brow, 
as an independent sovereign, he has been rebuked 
by divine law, becoming a slave to low passions 
and ideals as a logical result. His empire, so 
established in arrogancy, has had within itself 
certain weak and temporal elements which have 
brought pain and vexation. He has tried in vain, 
as independent pretender to the crown, to solve 
the riddle of his destiny, but all answers that have 
come to him have been filled with the doubtful 
meaning of the Delphic oracle. He has gone into 
the laboratory of time, and there, with his test- 
tubes, his mortar and pestle, has striven to find 
out the inner meaning of the elements. He has 
entered the operating room of science and with 



THE GREATEST OF ALL DREAMS 191 

keen scalpel has dissected the physical dwelling of 
the soul in the vain hope that he might under- 
stand himself. He has delved in the great 
libraries of all nations, deciphering many hiero- 
glyphics and strange symbols, striving thereby to 
get some clue to the hidden path along which the 
spirit of man has come. But in his every quest, 
man has been disappointed, and in the end, heart- 
broken. Looking out into the Stygian blackness 
of eternity he has cried inquiring, 

"Is there, is there balm in Gilead? 
Tell me, tell me, I implore," 

only to hear the hollow echo of the black raven 
of mystery, 

"Never-more, never-more!'* 

It is from the despair of such a hopeless quest 
that man has looked toward the gleam of a new 
light that shimmers In the skies. He turns, as 
Galileo, from an effete, geocentric system to the 
living, heliocentric philosophy. Formerly, the 
center of his faith and hope was himself; the 
new center is God. And the change works a 
revolution In his thought equal to that which came 
to medieval scientists when they changed from 
earth to sun as center of the system of planets in 
which we are working out our destiny. 



192 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

The God whom the Hebrews knew and hon- 
ored, the Jehovah of Sinai, alone, can interpret 
to the race the mysterious dream-life of the soul, 
the perplexing riddle of existence. Through Him, 
there comes a wondrous peace, a calm serenity, as 
the vexed heart considers the vastness of the sur- 
rounding universe. For the divide of death itself 
becomes to man, trusting in God, an invisible 
boundary line, like that existing between two 
countries, and used only for convenience. In re- 
ality, the whole globe is one extended sphere; 
likewise, the entire universe to the man of faith 
is extended from one center, namely, God. And 
whoever would have a co-rulership with Him 
over all that exists must stand at the center! 
Only from that point can he reasonably hope to 
have a share in the wielding of that centralized 
power which shapes the courses of the stars. 

The Son of Man is the interpreter of life. He 
does not consider physical death an abiding fact, 
a fundamental reality. '^I am the resurrection 
and the life; he that believeth in me, tho he were 
dead, yet shall he live." This expression cer- 
tainly declares death to be nothing more than a 
logical accident. Jesus recognizes It as one of 
those sad circumstances that must accompany de- 
velopment. But His is a new and unique inter- 



THE GREATEST OF ALL DREAMS 193 

pretation of death in that only life-terms are 
used. His definition of life crushes all ideals and 
concepts; the great and eternal *'I," representing 
an undying personality, is connotative of nothing 
excepting vital, living forces. Death is a part of 
a process, and as such is indispensable to God's 
scheme of unfoldment. And through this process 
Jesus declares all life must be drawn. Death 
may be represented as a mortar into which all 
elements, belonging to man, are thrown. Many 
a precious image is gathered there, only to be 
crusht to atoms by the cruel pestle, for Jesus is 
the most relentless iconoclast of history. And 
some sweet, tender plants out of the scented gar- 
dens of the heart are to be crusht into an un- 
recognizable pulp. Why? That a life may 
spring up out of the dust, constructed according 
to the will of God. All knowledge, art, science, 
are useful; but they must be broken into an 
atomic mass by the pestle of this divine Will. 
Riches, knowledge, culture are of value, but not 
within themselves; only as they can be grounded 
into dust are they capable of becoming a fine 
composite, beautifying the soul. Education be- 
comes of value to the mind just as the cocoon is 
of value to the chrysalis. But tho the cocoon be 
of finest silk, it must be utterly thrown aside; 



194 THE STANDARD OF PITCH IN RELIGION 

yet, the released butterfly, fluttering away into 
the upper air, carries with it whatever of essential 
value lay in the finely woven strands that were 
wound about it in its embryonic state. 

The whole creation, in Pauline language. Is 
groaning for deliverance. And this groaning is but 
the language of the suffering that must ever come 
from the mortar-and-pestle process subjecting all 
things to the Will as a constructive personality. 
The real crux of all suffering arises from the 
unwillingness of sentient beings to come into line 
with the purpose of God. 

But when this alignment of two wills has been 
achieved, the greatest of all events in man's his- 
tory transpires ; the will of man complying with the 
will of God takes every broken fragment of old 
idols and ideals of time and constructs with them 
a new temple, *'a house not made with hands, 
eternal in the heavens." Roses that have been 
crusht in the mortar become amaranthine, and ever 
adorn the palace ; plants that have been ground into 
ashes, spring into a new life by some crystal river 
and ever bear leaves for the healing of the nations. 
The soul-house is best adorned of all temples, since 
It represents the resultant of the suffering spirit of 
humanity and the suffering Spirit of God for un*- 
told ages. 



THE GREATEST OF ALL DREAMS 



195 



I have spoken of the soul's final estate as being 
represented by a temple, and I can think of no 
figure that more befittingly illustrates man's 
spiritual condition in time or eternity. The soul 
may be a temple, beautiful, exquisite, and yet lack- 
ing In orderliness, and destitute of the great 
adornment, namely, spiritual life. For it is quite 
possible to have the most perfect specimens of 
art and statuary throughout the splendid structure ; 
to have every corridor and gallery lined with 
paintings of the masters, and yet to be barren of 
Spirit. Can any building be more desolate than 
the empty fane, where He Is not? But the 
temple of eternal beauty Is that which has all that 
art and science can give to perfect and beautify, 
and which bears the marks of the divine touch, 
showing that the eternal Will has placed every- 
thing where It ought to be. And then at the 
temple's altar. In the Holy of Holies, there kneels 
the spirit of the temple Itself, In lowly recognition 
of the Will of the universe. The immortal self 
of man Is thus related to God. 



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